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THE 

ECLIPSE OF 
RUSSIA 



BY 



E. J. DILLON 

Author of "Ourselves and Germany,' 
"Russian Characteristics," etc. 




NEW Xa^ YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1918, 
By George H. Dorcm Company 



M 21 13,8 



Printed in the United States of America 



©0:.A4<J7849 , XX -^ 



Aa ^ I 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY FRIEND AND RUSSIA'S UNIQUE STATESMAN 

S. I. WITTE 



/ 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA I 

II THE RUSSIAN MIND II 

III LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 26 

IV THE TSARDOM 47 

V SOME PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 6 1 

VI THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 83 

VII THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II I06 

VUI THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II I20 

IX THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 

OF 1905 139 

X FATHER GAPON AND AZEFF 1 58 

XI WITTE CONDEMNED TO DIE 1 87 

XII RASPUTIN — A SYMBOL 1 96 

XIII RUSSIA'S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 221 

INCLUDING THE TSAR'S PLOT TO SEIZE THE n EIGHTS OF 
THE UPPER BOSPHORUS—TBE STORY OP KIAO CHOW 

XIV THE LAST STATESMAN OF THE TSARDOM .... 253 

INCLUDING THE HAGUE CONFERENCE MYSTIFICATION 

XV RUSSIA IN THE FAR EAST 279 

XVI THE SECRET TREATY OF BJORKE — 1 312 

:VII THE SECRET TREATY OF BJORKE — II 329 

[II THE SECRET TREATY REVEALED 354 

XIX THE DOWNFALL OF THE TSARDOM 371 

POSTSCRIPT 391 

APPENDIX — DETAILS OF THE SECRET TREATY . . . 393 

INDEX 415 

vii 



THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



I 



THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



CHAPTER I 

The Russian Enigma 

The misfortunes of Russia and the disillusions of the 
nations that trusted her promises and relied on her help 
are attributed to no one circumstance more markedly than 
the failure of the interested statesmen to grasp the purely 
predatory character of the Tsardom, its incompatibility with 
the politico-social ordering of latter-day Europe, the press- 
ing necessity on the one hand and the almost insuperable 
difficulty on the other of remodelling and adapting it to its 
European environment. It is no exaggeration to affirm that 
the history of drifting Europe — excluding the Central 
Empires — during the past quarter of a century, and of the 
outbreak of the awful struggle at its close, is the story of a 
tissue of deplorable mistakes — a tragedy of errors culminat- 
ing in a catastrophe. The delusion of statesmen about the 
Tsardom, its origins and its drift, are the least blameworthy. 
For Russia is a cryptic volume to Slav nations, and to 
Britons a book with seven seals. Her own ruling class 
constantly misread the workings of her peoples' mind. Even 
the close observer who classified the strange phenomena 
that unfolded themselves to his eye seldom traced them back 
to their causes or realised their various bearings. Between 
Slav and Saxon, in particular, there yawns a psychological 
abyss wide enough in places to sunder two different species 
^of beings not merely two separate races. And of all Slav 
loples the Russian is by far the most complex and puzzling. 
[e often raises expectations which a supernatural entity 
mid hardly fulfil, and awakens apprehensions which only 
miracle could lay, yet somehow neither hopes nor fears 
ire realised and, as they fade away, one wonders how they 
jould ever have been entertained. In truth, Sarniatia is a 



2 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

realm of illusions where the goddess Maya is hardly less 
active or thaumaturgic than in the Buddhist world of shows. 

Unsophisticated foreigners are bewildered by the con- 
trasts, subtleties, and contradictions that mark the thoughts 
and acts of the articulate, to say nothing of the inarticulate, 
Russian nation. In vain they strive to disentangle the skein 
of events and episodes in which these utter themselves. Nor 
do they perceive their own errors until it is too late. It is a 
noteworthy illustration of the easy-going ways of the Entente 
Governments that they should have accepted as adequate 
accounts of things Russian the fanciful pictures reflected in 
the minds of foreigners ignorant of the country, the history, 
the people, and the language. It fell to my lot more than 
once to hear the wildest theories propounded by responsible 
ministers during the war on the strength of such misleading 
reports, and I have seen political measures adopted which 
were bound to defeat the objects for which they were planned. 

Even Russian statements have to be placed, so to say, 
in quarantine and truth sifted carefully from fiction. I 
remember an interesting illustration that came under my 
cognisance one evening soon after the promulgation of the 
Constitution of October, 1905, which was extorted from the 
Tsar by Count Witte. The press was discussing the question 
of how the future Duma should be elected, by direct uni- 
versal, equal, and secret suffrage or otherwise. I was sitting 
in the Winter Palace with Witte when Count B. and Prince 
U., both of whom were afterwards elected to the first Duma, 
were announced. They were shown in. "We are come," 
said Count B., "from the country where we enjoy the con- 
fidence of the peasant population, and we wish you to know 
that we are absolutely opposed to direct universal suffrage. 
Absolutely. Under no conditions will we accept it, because 
it would lead to the ruin of the Empire. So true is this and 
so firm is our resolve to save the country from this calamity 
that if you make the suffrage direct or universal we two will 
march to Petersburg at the head of our armed peasants and 
will fight until the decree is rescinded. Please communicate 
this respectfully to his Majesty." 



^1 



THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA 3 

Witte calmed the fiery passion of the count and the two 
visitors left. A fortnight later there was a dispute among the 
cabinet ministers on the subject of the suffrage. The Tsar 
displayed his interest in the matter, and Witte decided to 
send for Count B. and Prince U. and to give them an 
opportunity of laying before the sovereign the views of the 
population in that province of Central Russia. But when 
they arrived he stood aghast to hear Count B. inveigh in un- 
measured terms against those short-sighted individuals who 
dared to restrict the suffrage and deprive the Tsar's loyal 
subjects of their right to vote for, or against, a candidate. 
"But," expostulated Witte, *'was it not you who fourteen 
days ago said the very opposite and threatened to march on 
the capital at the head of the armed peasants if we enacted 
what you now demand?" "Yes, yes, I know all that. But 
during that fortnight I have been among the peasants and 
asked them for their views. And what is more, I can tell you 
that most Russians of the intelligentsia are of the same mind. 
And I am anxious to tell his Majesty how they think and feel 
on the subject." 

As I was very well acquainted with Count B. I took him 
aside and taunted him with his sudden change of front, but 
he defended himself, urging quite seriously, "Most of my 
friends are for universal suffrage. So is the general public. 
Surely that is a good reason for yielding to the consensus of 
opinion." Down to the Revolution Count B. played a 
prominent but not a helpful part in Russian politics. 

The struggle which, since the year 1904, has been going 
on in the Tsardom was so tremendous, the interests involved 
were so many and mixed, and the vicissitudes of the contest 
so frequent and sudden, that to be understood even approxi- 
mately they need to be approached from more than one 
angle. The analyses made by the Russian people themselves, 
which are among the most instructive, are not by any means 
the most trustworthy. For class misunderstands class hope- 
lessly. Indeed, the extent to which Russian observers have 
gone astray in their appreciation and forecast of events and 
situations, and in their interpretation of the nation's ideas 



4 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

and aspirations, would astonish the reader if it could be set 
forth in detail. A few of the more striking instances may 
here suffice. 

In the 'seventies the two main parties that advocated a 
revolution were anxious to get hold of the emancipated 
peasants and to energise them. But they had no knowledge 
of the people, whose soul was, to use a Russian saying, a 
dusky forest. They agreed, therefore, that their best plan 
would be to merge themselves in the peasantry, to live the 
unenviable life of the tiller of the soil, and to interest them 
actively in the upheaval that would bring about the millen- 
nium. Representative men and women of all the "intelli- 
gent" classes accordingly swelled the ranks of these apostles, 
and with alternating self-denial and self-indulgence, devoid 
of measure, self-discipline, and coherency, took to the life of 
squalor and hardship to which the mooshik ^ has for ages 
been inured and diversified it by bouts of looseness and 
back-sliding. Adoration of the people whom they hoped to 
indoctrinate and inspire was the new religion which the 
"intellectuals" preached and for a time endeavoured to 
practise. They looked upon the nation as a body mystical, 
somewhat as Roman Catholics regard their Church, but 
they went further than the Roman Catholic and worshipped 
the object of their veneration, sacrificed their ease to it, and 
in some cases died for it. Yet they were aggressive atheists 
withal, and atheists who took their dogmatic negation second- 
hand from foreign writers without verification or study. 
With no attainable goal, no lode star in their strivings, no 
inspiring dogma to sustain them, no cleanliness, moral or 
ethical, in their habits, with hardly a trace of conscience and 
no sense of individual duty,^ they fancied that having 
fashioned a deity they could yoke it to their char-a-banc and 
drive to a marvellous Utopia. Everybody who disagreed 
with them was anathema, and even those who were not 
actually with them were under their ban. For they were the 
most intolerant of despots. My friend LeskofT, one of 
Russia's most gifted novelists, whose politics were colour- 
*One of the Russian words for peasant. 'Cf. Landmarks, 1910. 



THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA 5 

less rather than reactionary, was systematically ignored by 
them, and none of the Lil^eral reviews or newspapers would 
dare to publish a favourable notice of his works. Vladimir 
Solovieff, Russia's unique philosopher, was sneered at as a 
visionary, and Dostoyeffsky set down as an obscurantist, 
because they reproached those self-made missionaries with 
harbouring a fundamentally false idea of the Russian people 
and with being ignorant of its aims and aspirations. These 
courageous writers added that it was mischievous presump- 
tion in men of unclean lives, changeful purpose, and misty 
notions of science to hope to bring about the transfiguration 
of the masses and lead them to an enchanted, unpromised 
land. 

After a long series of disillusions, rebuflfs, and humilia- 
tions, the zeal of the revolutionary Narodniki ^ cooled. They 
were forced to the conclusion that their reading of the 
peoples' strivings was wrong, that their own impulsive action 
was distinctly baleful, and that the success of the cause for 
which they had sacrificed so much must lie in other 
directions. 

Years after,^ my friend Witte, together with several of his 
colleagues, when preparing the electoral law for the first 
Duma, fell into a like error. Regarding the peasants as the 
most conservative element in the Empire he gave them the 
preponderance in the Chamber and then found that he had 
wholly mistaken their temper and misinterpreted their aims. 
The mistakes made by the Kadets ^ ever since they 
organised their party were equally glaring and much more 
sinister. More than once this influential party had their own 
object and seemingly the fate of the nation well within their 
reach, but by misreading the character of their people and 
shaping their tactics congruously with this false conception 
they forfeited their chances. The first of these missed 
opportunities occurred immediately after Count Witte had 
jockeyed the Tsar into limiting his absolute power and 
convoking a representative assembly. 

* So called from the word Narod, a nation. 

* In 1905. • Constitutional Democrats. 



6 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Entrusted with the task of governing, Witte's immediate 
aim was to estabHsh on a solid basis constitutional govern- 
ment of a kind adapted to the nation's needs as he under- 
stood them, and he agreed with me in thinking that to give 
the peoples of Russia universal suffrage and parliamentary 
government, such as obtains in Britain, Belgium, and Italy, 
would be to feed a new-born child on roast beef and plum 
pudding. A Russian adaptation of the Prussian, or at most 
the German, constitution, but without universal suff'rage, 
seemed to him to meet the case adequately. But he could 
not hope to carry his programme without the support of 
public opinion, and public opinion, as he well knew, was 
eager for a democratic regime to be instituted at once and 
was, therefore, opposed to his tenure of office on the Russian 
principle that no bread is preferable to half a loaf* He 
requested me to sound my friends, the Liberals and the 
Jews, and to endeavour to secure their support. I was em- 
powered to dangle before their eyes the perspective — which 
was no will-o'-the-wisp — that the power which his health 
would not allow him to retain more than eight or ten months 
would immediately pass on to them and that they would 
thank him right cordially and deservedly then for not having 
thrown open the sluices to the anarchic flood misnamed 
democracy. 

I first addressed myself to the Jews, some among whom a 
couple of months before had assured me that they would 
accept gratefully a representative chamber, even if its func- 
tions were circumscribed, provided it was a viable organism 
of growth. But now scarcely had I opened my mouth when 
I received the emphatic answer, "No. The Jews will give 
no support to Witte. He is not their man. He is a mere 
bureaucrat, and no bureaucrat can play the role of reformer." 
Thereupon I tried suasion and held up before the eyes of 
the Jewish leaders the prospect of a Liberal cabinet after 
their own heart taking over the seals of power from Witte 
within a twelvemonth. This outlook soothed the hearts and 
sweetened the words of my friends, but their message was 
still a refusal, only it now ended with the words, "If Witte 



THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA 7 

had made his proposal sooner — it might have met with a 
different reception. But now — now the Jewish cause is indis- 
solubly bound up with the revolutionary Bund. The Jews 
will owe their emancipation to force, and they will see to it 
that the force is sufficient to burst their bonds and give them 
all their rights." "And if they fail and pogroms recommence 
will the condition of the Jews be better?" I asked. 'That 
is an unlikely supposition, in the Russia that has received the 
October Manifesto. Anyhow we are willing to run the risk." 

I next went to the Liberals, who afterwards became the 
Kadets, and made my proposals to a group including 
MM. Petrunkevitch and Roditcheff. The conversation 
moved over the same lines as when I had reasoned with the 
Jewish leaders, with this difference, that the Liberals were 
more curious and asked for greater details. They finally 
said, "Witte is insincere. He is a bureaucrat. He is playing 
for his own hand. He flatters now the Tsar and now the 
intelligentsia. He has no programme; if he had, you would 
be able to unfold it even though he might not be able to 
publish it. You cannot give us any details. Therefore we 
will not support him. Let him resign and people may believe 
in his sincerity." "He will resign after the loan is floated 
next spring," I said. "And if in the meanwhile you do not 
support him, you will then have reaction." Never shall I 
forget the explosion of laughter produced by my words. 
"Dr. Dillon, we thought that you, at least, knew Russia well 
enough to grasp the fact that the days of reaction are over. 
Henceforth a reactionary movement in Russia is incon- 
ceivable." "If your assumption is correct," I retorted, 
"your decision is statesmanlike" : and I took my leave and 
went back to the Winter Palace to carry the fatal message. 

Witte, when I delivered the answers, said, "I am not 
altogether surprised that the Jews have thrown in their lot 
with the revolutionary gang, but I am pained. They received 
provocation enough to make them impatient, but none the less 
they are only making Ixid worse. They cannot win by 
force l)ecause the army is on the other side. As for the 
Liberals they are a conceited, short-sighted, unpractical lot. 



8 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

You who know the situation are aware that I cannot stand 
the strain of office much beyond April next, when I hope to 
float the biggest loan recorded in history. After that I would 
have retired in favour of the Liberals. But if in the mean- 
while they are against me I shall be thwarted and they will 
not be benefited. What fools they are ! They are of the same 
clay as the men who made away with Alexander II. on the 
day when he had signed the decree promulgating a constitu- 
tion. As for reaction, if only they knew how the high priests 
of the reaction are weaving their spells and uttering their 
incantations in the palace even now, and how impatient the 
Emperor is to give them their innings, salutary fear of the 
reaction would, of itself, have sufficed to convert the Liberals 
into supporters of my cabinet. But we shall all see how their 
attitude works out — and then the experience will be of no 
avail. It is an awful tragedy!" Not only did the Kadets 
not support Witte's domestic policy, but a number of their 
adherents repaired to Paris and endeavoured to dissuade the 
French government from advancing the money demanded 
by the Russian Premier ! And the Jews played the same game 
in Berlin. On the part of candidates for power these tactics 
are unintelligible to the Western mind. 

In the following summer those same Liberals, who had 
since formed themselves into a parliamentary party under 
the name of "Kadets," gave further proof of their lack not 
only of political sense but also of practical acquaintance with 
the bulk of their own people. They publicly promised the 
land to the peasants, whetting appetites and stirring up 
tumultuous passions which made the country deaf to the 
finer vibrations of the political voice, and ended by swamp- 
ing all political issues and their exponents. It was the 
evocation of a spirit which they were unable to lay. Again, 
when the first Duma was dissolved by a quaking cabinet 
and an irresolute Tsar who had decided to entrust the reins 
to the Kadets, these amazing tacticians fled to Vyborg in 
Finland, set the imperial decree at naught, and threatened the 
government with penury, confident that the nation, whom it 
exhorted to pay no taxes, would make good the threat at any 



THE RUSSIAN ENIGMA 9 

and every cost. But this draft on the peoples' devotion was 
dishonoured. Taxes were collected as successfully as before, 
and the main results produced by the audacious move were 
the elimination of the Kadets from the ranks of candidates 
for the government which was about to have been handed 
over to them and the disqualification of some of their best 
men for seats in the Duma. 

Finally it was the Kadets and their parliamentary friends 
who, when the March revolution of 19 17 was in progress, 
weakly acquiesced in the abolition of the monarchy and the 
extinction of the Duma, reckoning upon the self-discipline 
and moderation of an anarchist people which acknowledged 
no restraints and knew not what measure means. But they 
knew not what they did. 

It is hardly too much to affirm that if the parliamentary 
parties had understood their own people better they would 
not have swept away the regime root and branch, dissolved 
the Duma, which might conceivably still have been able to 
keep the various Russians together, and broken up the 
greatest political community in Europe. 

The history of the revolution of 19 17 in its technical 
aspect is the tale of a fatal psychological error and its sequel. 
It was the currency of the notion that the peasant was aware 
of the causal nexus between his situation of inferiority in the 
community and the vicious system of governance under 
which he lived that induced in the Duma leaders the belief 
that the political revolution which they were shaping and 
circumscribing would be welcomed as a boon by the masses. 
In itself the change as projected by them would have been 
beneficial. To free the country from the parasitical bureau- 
cracy, to restrict the power of the Tsar, establish parlia- 
mentary government, and admit the people to a share in 
public affairs proportionate to their mental and moral 
equipment were among the aims of the Duma leaders. 
But the whole conception, elaborated by lawyers and pro- 
fessors, bore the stamp of the legal rather than the psycho- 
logical temper. It lost sight of the peculiar workings of the 
peasants' psyche and of the narrowness of their intellectual 



10 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

horizon. Its authors forgot that hardly one of the institu- 
tions of the Empire, economic or political, was rooted in 
its essential fitness and utility, and that the function by which 
society can assimilate what is helpful and reject what is per- 
nicious was long since atrophied. They had no inkling of 
the decisive fact that the predatory character of the State had 
long since been assimilated by the people who were accus- 
tomed to rob the land of its fertility and were impatient to 
deprive the nobles of the land. 

The second error flowed from the first. It was taken for 
granted that the masses were self-disciplined enough to 
accept just what was offered them and be content with that. 
On this assumption, and by way of winning their support, 
the Duma leaders promised them the land belonging to the 
great landowners provided that they would wait until the 
Constituent Assembly should meet and lay down the con- 
ditions of expropriation and transfer. But the Bolsheviks at \ 
once outbid the Kadets, took the people into partnership 
with themselves, and practically offered it the situation of 
national parasite from which the bureaucracy had just been 
ousted, the only difference being that the body on which the ' 
people was to prey was that of the well-to-do section of the 
community. This aspect of the revolution — which has also 
other and nobler facets — may be aptly described as "the 
democratisation of parasitism which had theretofore been 
confined to the administration and its branches.'* ^ A glance 
at the work of spoliation by beings who display no trace of ' 
conscience or moral sense, who pounce like beasts upon 
their prey, torturing and slaying the defenceless and the 
well meaning, deaf to pity and heedless of the morrow, will 
suffice to justify that somewhat hard definition. It is owing 
to the characteristics enumerated that "Russia is a poor 
country in spite of her riches, uncultured notwithstanding 
her talents, an amazing mixture of the sublime and the 
savage in which, however, the simply civilised element is 
wholly absent." ^ It is a land of cultural no less than climatic 
extremes. 

'Cf. Gazette de Lausanne, 7th January, 1918. * Ibidem. 



CHAPTER II 

The Russian Mind 

Ever since the dawn of her history Russia has vegetated, 
rather than Hved, apart from the main European currents — 
social, religious, political, and scientific — untouched by the 
prevailing tendencies of the times and with a decided drift 
of her own to political decomposition. As the democratic 
spirit progressed in the rest of Europe, Russia more and more 
resembled the iceberg floating into warm climes and thawing 
as it moved. Her rulers would appear to have had no clear 
conception of the baleful kind of international entity into 
which their predatory State had become, of its essential 
antagonism to the European community of nations, or of the 
utter collapse of the whole fabric that must ensue upon a 
serious endeavour to change its nature and bring it into line 
with the communities of the West. It was only by dint of 
circumstance and brute force that the people, naturally 
rebellious to social discipline, had been knit into a loose 
organisation which aimed not merely at protection from out- 
side aggression but also and especially at territorial ex- 
pansion, and in this way had to dispense with creating 
conditions favourable to the highest social life. 

The most merciless, if not the most convincing, analyses 

of the national character have been made by Russians 

ithemselves, who are prone to morbid introspection and also 

^^to exaggeration and often indulge in self-abasement. Take, 

las example, the utterance of Peter the Great, "Other 

tEuropean peoples one can treat as human beings, but I 

:have to do with cattle." The celebrated TshaadayefT, who 

^leaded the reform movement in the reign of Nicholas I. and 

:jade his countrymen look to the West for light and guidance, 

lescribed Russia as a superfluous member of the body of 

lumanity. "No great truth," he affirmed, "ever came 

rem out of our people. We have discovered nothing, and 

II 



12 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

from all the discoveries made by other nations we have 
borrowed only the outward simulacrum of useful luxury." ^ 
For these and similar opinions Tshaadayeff, the officer of 
the Guards, was shut up in a mad-house. It may not be 
amiss, therefore, to quote one of the few native psycholo- 
gists who is free from those defects of self-castigation and 
over-statement and paints the generality of his countrymen 
in colours the effect of which is relatively bright. "The 
Russian man," writes M. Nikitenko,^ "knows neither law 
nor justice. His morality is the outcome of his good humour, 
which being neither developed nor strengthened by con- 
scious principles, sometimes sprouts forth into an action, 
but is frequently swallowed up by other and more savage 
instincts. A Russian may steal and booze and cheat until 
you find it irksome to live with him. And yet in spite of it 
all you feel that there is something in him that captivates 
and draws you towards him, something good, intelligent, 
fraught with promise, something that raises him above the 
level of every German, every Frenchman, and even English- 
man you ever met." ' 

Now that undefined something is, I take it, the psychical 
undercurrent inherent in certain representatives of the race, 
the latent spiritual force which assimilates fleeting moods or, 
as mystics would say, fleeting moods to fitful memories of 
a pre-natal state or fleeting presentiments of a wondrous 
future. For the higher type of Russian, educated or illiterate, 
is attracted, at least speculatively, to lofty ideals, and is also 
capable of striving after them for a time with a superb con- 
tempt of consequence, heroically heedless of the route he 
traverses, but without method or perseverance. The result 
is often as tragi-comical as was that of the genius who with 
his gaze fixed on the stars tripped and fell into a boghole. 
The limits of the sphere of dream and waking, the bounds 
of true and false, the line of demarcation between the sublime 
and the ridiculous, pale and vanish as the fanatical Russian 
follows a Jack-o'-lantern into the enchanted land of fantasy. 



* Cf. Russian Heads, by Dr. T. Schiemann, p. 231. 

'Russian Antiquity. ' Cf. Russian Antiquity, May, 1891. 



4 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 18 

On the absurd incongruities and follies to which visionaries 
are led by these vain strivings to bring down the ideals of 
the millennium to the earth and clothe them in the garb of 
every-day reality it is needless to dwell. One has but to 
cast a glance at the horrors enacted in Petrograd and Odessa 
after the Maximalist revolution or, indeed, to recall- certain 
of the other revolting exhibitions that followed that sinister 
outburst. 

Some observers are struck with what they consider the 
contrast in the Russian people between the effects of historic 
forces on the one hand and those of racial tendencies on the 
other. I venture to think that these effects were largely 
caused by the blending of widely different races. That they 
exist and that Russia is the synthesis of contradictions cannot 
be gainsaid by those who have studied the origins of her 
people. "Meekness and brutality, communism and the 
most advanced individualism, the strongest state and the 
weakest political consciousness, absence of race-hatred and 
the most cruel pogroms, the deepest religious nature and 
the most abject superstition, an all-pervading democracy 
and the most absolute monarchy, all these contradictions 
and more are the result of this unique jostling of mythical 
antiquity and stark reality — an eternal and inextricable 
enigma to the Western observer." ^ After ages of spiritual 
stagnation and politico-social bondage the Russian man is 
still half a child and half an imperfectly tamed beast. But if 
he lacks culture he has a rich experience and a stoical life- 
philosophy enshrined in picturesque proverbs of which the 
basis is resignation to Fate and pity for his ill-starred fellows; 
his language is rich, coloured, and forcible, but his thinking 
lacks sequence and his reasoning logic; his action begins in 
hesitation, is continued with intervals of quiescence, and 
almost always ends before achievement. Deeds belie words, 
means hinder ends, indifference compensates for lack of 
constancy. In his dealings with his fellows the Russian 
often runs through the entire gamut of temperament from 
feminine gentleness to l)estial ferocity. 

* Leo Wiener, An Interpretation of the Russian People, p. 15. 



14 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

To bring out these characteristics of the dominant race, 
foremost among which is a marked tendency to embroider 
truth and subject the call of duty to the passing mood, and 
to trace them to their sources was one of the objects of a 
book of mine^ written many years ago which has since 
received the hall-mark of approval from the greatest Russian 
authority ^ on these questions.^ I there pointed out that a 
careful survey of the leading elements of social life in that 
country must convince the unbiassed of the need of a 
standard of judgment wholly different from that which we 
are wont to apply to other European races, the Russian being 
still, so to say, in the gristle, not yet hardened in the bone 
of manhood. 

By nature the Northern Slavs are richly gifted. A keen 
subtle understanding; surprising quickness of apprehension 
—a changeful temper; an inexhaustible flow of animal 
spirits; a rude persuasive eloquence, and a capacity for self- 
denial equalled only by that of the early Christian ascetics 
and for fiendish cruelty comparable to that of the Redskms 
of North America,* to which may be added an imitative 

i 

* Russian Characteristics, by E. B. Lanin. ■ 

* Professor Milyukoff, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

•Leo Wiener, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the 
Harvard University, in his admirable book An Interpretation of the Rus- 
sian People (London, 1915), writes: ''Several years ago I asked P/ofessor 
Milyukoff, the distinguished historian of civilisation, what English book 
he considered the best as regards its analysis of modern Russia. With- 
out a moment's hesitation, and with a twinkle m his eye, he answered 
'E T Dillon's Russian Characteristics/ The reply betrayed a distinct 
Russian attitude towards censure, for a more incisive condemnation ot 
everything Russian could hardly be imagined, and any one other than a 
Russian would have blushed with shame and burned with mdignation at 
the very mention of that brilliant Irishman's mordant attack "Pon his na- 
tion. But Milyukoff does not stand alone in his conviction, for although 
Dr Dillon is known to Russian society and to the Government as the 
author of these sketches he continues to live in Petrograd as an honoured 
man and perfectly secure in his Avestan studies. ^ .1. 

*The manner in which the officers were tortured m 1877 cannot even be 
described in Western countries. General Korovichenko in Tashkent was 
horribly maltreated until he was agonising. Then he was laid on the floor 
of his apartment and the crowd was admitted on payment of 30 copecks to 
enter in and spit on his face. Cf. Le Temps, loth January, 1918. 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 15 

faculty almost simian in range and intensity — constitute an 
adequate equipment for the discharge of what worldly- 
minded statesmen were wont to term their "heaven-sent 
mission to civilise the world." But these and other gifts 
were blighted and turned into curses by influences — natural 
and artificial — that made their free exercise impossible and 
rendered their possessors as impersonal as the men who 
raised the pyramids in the desert or the builders of the coral 
reefs in the Pacific. The resultant is an easy-going, patient, 
shiftless, ignorant, unveracious, and fitfully ferocious mass 
whom the German writers flippantly connect by an isocul- 
tural line with the Gauchos of Paraguay. 

Incapacity to gauge and maintain the proper relation in 
which words should stand to things lies at the root of one 
Russian quality hardly distinguishable from the mythopoeic 
faculty among primitive races, but which Anglo-Saxons 
bluntly label unveracity. It is beyond question a trait of the 
Northern Russ. The masses display scant reverence for 
facts, refuse to acknowledge their finality, and argue as 
though they could be safely disregarded, nay, even altered 
at a pinch. Their imagination is powerful enough to fuse, 
recast, and readjust them to their velleities. To time, space, 
and causality they ascribe but a shadowy existence, and even 
that they often ignore in practice. Thus a whole generation 
of professional revolutionaries passed their time fruitlessly 
operating with words and doing nothing. The life of the 
reformer Bakunin was a continuous battle — fought with 
empty phrases for a mere negation. 

Congruously with this mental cast the Russians are free 
and easy in their use of words as exponents of facts, or 
symbols of ideas, and set so much less value than Western 
peoples on assurances and promises, however solemn, that 
they rob praise of its worth and calumny of its sting. I shall 
never forget an anecdote told me many years ago by my 
friend the novelist, Leskoff, of an Englishman invited to 
Russia by Nicholas I. for the sole purpose of becoming 
acquainted with Gogol's story Dead Souls, which had not 
yet been translated into any foreign tongue. A nobleman 



16 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

equally well at home in English and Russian was told off by 
the Emperor to visit the new-comer daily and translate the 
book orally chapter by chapter. At the farewell audience 
accorded to him on his departure the guest was asked by 
the Tsar how he relished the novel. The Briton reflected a 
moment and then exclaimed with an air of deep conviction, 
"The Russians, sire, are unconquerable." "Unconquer- 
able?" queried the Tsar, puzzled by the seemingly irrele- 
vant reply. "I don't quite see the nexus." "Well, your 
Majesty, no other people on the face of God's earth could 
have produced such a consummate cheat as Gogol's hero. 
The nation that brought him forth is sheer unconquerable." 

Thus hampered aHke by their qualities and their defects, 
the bulk of the nation — I am dealing now exclusively with 
the Great Russian, who represents only 48 per cent, of 
the population ^ — is obviously still unfitted to discharge the 
functions that devolve upon a self-governing democracy. 
And interest as well as duty made it incumbent on the 
popular leaders to give practical recognition to this decisive 
fact while endeavouring to modify it by educating the people. 
This step presupposed a high degree of moral courage; and 
it was never taken. One prominent man, my friend, Maxim 
Kovalevsky, fearlessly proclaimed the truth and garnered 
in unpopularity. And yet a policy of this limited scope need 
not have damped the reformers' ardour nor affected their 
ultimate aims. After all, politics is the art of the possible, 
and the possible is gauged by studying the material to be 
handled', and is attained by accepting compromises after 
having balanced the inconveniences. But even the educated 
class of the Russian population, the "intellectuals," are 
admittedly deficient in political sense as well as in deep- I 
rooted concrete interests. One cannot affect surprise at this, ■ 
considering their origin as a class, their status in the com- 
munity, and the ruthless way in which the Tsar's government 

* There are 48 per cent. Great Russians. The remaining 52 per cent, is 
spHt into three groups: (i) The White or Little Russians; (2) The non- 
Russian races of the Caucasus, East Russia, and Silesia; and (3) races of 
the West (Poles, Lithuanians, Letts, Esthcnians, Finns, Swedes). 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 17 

suppressed the application of individual thought and energy 
to all national and most international concerns. Neither is 
it to be wondered at that so many Russian reformers were 
impractical day-dreamers, willing to sacrifice the feasible 
good for the unattainable best, and always liable to run off 
at a tangent in quest of some secondary aim. Had it been 
otherwise, had the party chiefs, who in October, 1905, aspired 
to lead the Russian masses, drawn a lesson from the events 
of that time and borne that lesson in mind in 19 17 when 
surveying the new situation and gauging its trend and possi- 
bilities, they would have shrunk from the destruction of 
their last plank of safety, the Duma, and the abolition of the 
Tsardom, and abstained from the acts that led up to these 
suicidal measures. For say what we may, the blast that 
destroyed the monarchy and shattered the nation came 
directly from the Duma leaders, semi-consciously aided and 
abetted by the simple-minded representatives of the Entente, 
whom history may come to regard as drowsy, if not sleeping, 
partners of the active plotters. 

One can feel for the Entente powers who nobly set out 
to do battle for the weak and oppressed nationalities in the 
company of the greatest oppressor of weak nationalities the 
world had ever seen — the one predatory State in Europe 
which glutted its piratical appetites not only on foreign 
peoples but also on its own. It was like the shepherd's dogs 
taking a pack of wolves with them to look after the defence- 
less sheep. And the Entente governments were painfully 
alive to all that was ridiculous and embarrassing in their 
position, especially when they had been bullied into promis- 
ing Constantinople to Russia and agreeing to treat the fate 
of Poland as a domestic Russian concern. Naturally they 
were impatient to see the Tsardom democratised and, 
ignorant of the State structure with which they were dealing, 
they bent its pillars and pulled down the whole fabric. 

Not only were the character and defects of the pre- 
dominant element of the population — the Russian race — 
uniformly misunderstood by the chiefs of the parliamentary 
party in Petrograd and their friends abnxid, but the further 



18 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

all-important circumstance was unheeded that there was no 
ethnic unity in the Empire, nor anything more politically 
than a loose amalgam of conflicting nationalities and mutually 
conflicting classes knit together by awe of imperial authority 
and the pressure exerted by an omnipotent bureaucracy. 
Internal cement there was none. For ages the souls of the 
many subject races had been waiting for some great crisis 
to fuse them in one and embody them anew in the product 
of a cultural blend. Some onlookers imagine that the present 
world-war was destined to be the Medea's cauldron that 
would transform or kill, but, whether this was likely or not, 
it behoved those politicians who imagined that they held the 
nation's future in their hands to eschew everything calculated 
to intensify the mutual aversion of the ethnic ingredients 
whose fusion was the preliminary condition to the formation 
of a homogeneous people in a united and indivisible Russia. 
The chiefs, however, unconscious of the danger and 
solicitous about their parties, suddenly removed the one 
force that could have kept the nationalities and classes 
together, whereupon these collapsed like the staves of a barrel 
from which the hoops have been knocked off. And their 
collapse was so natural, so necessary, the elements being 
juxtaposed as they were, that it could and should have been 
foreseen. One of the main objects of my articles and book 
written in the years 1891-93 was to prepare the public for the 
downfall of the Tsardom. 

It is fair to say, however, that the coalescence of all 
Russia's peoples being neither feasible nor desirable, that 
of the principal culture-bearers would have sufficed. Slav 
and Turk, German and Calmuck, Jew and Mongol, Tunguz 
and Georgian, Armenian and Bashkir, display physiological 
and psychical differences so vast that the resultant of assimi- 
lation must be in every respect unsound. In all such cases 
the moral grade is lowered, for great racial divergences in 
the elements of an ethnic blend necessarily beget degenera- 
tion. In a ruling or self-governing race it is basic character 
that regulates the morality of the community, shapes its 
destinies, determines its place in the world. Consequently 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 19 

history is at bottom the manifestation of national character 
rather than of average intelHgence, the working of the moral 
bent much more than of the intellectual gifts and attainments 
of the people. And under normal conditions neither in the 
race nor in the individual is character liable to change. It is 
my belief, however, that an exception is made by the 
character of the Russian which is marked by variability. 
Soft, receptive, and pliant it lacks grit and backbone. In 
initiative, self-mastery, and staying power the individual is 
sadly deficient and the people have less than an average 
nation's share of cohesiveness. To use a picturesque 
American expression they are not **self-winders." Indeed, 
one might aptly term Russia **the boneless man of Europe." 

Of all the individual and, therefore, also racial traits of 
the Northern Slav the most noteworthy to my thinking, and 
one to which I have never seen any allusion in books or 
articles, is precisely this variability of character. I mention 
this peculiarity only after long years of observation and 
merely as a surmise which still needs verification. Im- 
pressibility to certain classes of motive and corresponding 
indifference to others constitute the woof and warp of human 
character, and character — the bedrock of personality — is 
deemed to be almost as unchangeable as the inherent prop- 
erties of things. It may sound rash, therefore, to affirm 
that the Russian differs from other Europeans in the incon- 
stancy of his impressibility to a given class of motive in its 
liability to vary in response to inner and outer influences 
which generally elude analysis. But to my thinking the facts 
warrant the assumption. And for this reason the most careful 
estimates of what a Russian will do under a given set of 
circumstances, even though his antecedents be known and 
examples of his past conduct be there to guide one, cannot 
be taken as trustworthy and are often l>elied by the event. 

When during a critical stage in the process of racial 
amalgamation a politico-social upheaval brings turbulent 
chaos in its train, as in the year 19 17, the danger is indeed 
formidable. It is then touch and go with the inchoate nation. 
The ethnic elements either combine definitely, forming a 



20 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

tertium quid as did the heterogeneous races of France, or else 
repel each other violently as do the nationalities of Austria. 
The former result was rapidly brought about by the French 
Revolution which smoothed away the jarring traits of 
Picards and Normans, Bretons and Provengals, Flemings 
and Basques, producing a one-souled, united French people. 
The latter consummation is now making headway in Russia, 
whose Germans, Jews, Finns, Tartars, Mongols, Armenians, 
Georgians, scornfully refuse to commingle with, and lose 
themselves in, the passive unassimilating Slav. Their racial 
and political differences are accentuated as never before, 
the general tendency is centrifugal, and the desire for union, 
where union until recently seemed possible, is weakened or 
gone. 

But a still worse calamity threatens the inhabitants of the 
new republic. Baleful though a revolution may be, it does 
not necessarily involve the ruin of a country. Indeed, it 
very often clears the way for a fresh period of evolution under 
the sway of a new idea. National upheavals generally coin- 
cide with the spiritual seed-time of which later generations 
reap the harvest. In Russians case, however, the germs of a 
new order are as yet nowhere visible. Far from this, the 
loosening of all social and other bonds is the inevitable if 
not the wished-for goal. No positive idea has been pro- 
pounded, no constructive effort put forth by any one there. 
Dogmas on which a section of the nation has been living for 
ages are now thrust aside as antiquated prejudices and their 
negatives are gaining a temporary hold over the minds of 
earnest and hot-headed men. But only their negatives. It 
is not as though new, untried ideas were sprouting up, from 
which in time good fruit might reasonably be expected. 
The barren denial of old ones is judged sufficient, as though 
mere negatives could serve as the groundwork of a vast social 
and poHtical structure. The attempted realisation of these 
negations is now turning the country upside down and inside 
out; and there is reason to fear that the one practical out- 
come will be a superfluous and catastrophic demonstration 
that a mere negation is not a constructive force. 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 21 

Since March, 19 17, the sole effect of these solvents has 
been to produce that anarchic decomposition the germs of 
which were inherent in the Tsardom ever since its birth. 
In lieu of an ideal leaven to raise and lighten the inert lump, 
we descry only powerful explosives capable of shattering it. 
The leading classes had long since forsaken the old tenets, 
religious and political, and their example contributes to 
undermine the unreasoning faith of the common people, 
whose selfish savage instincts superstition or force had so 
often checked without transforming. Crude notions of an 
anthropomorphic God and of an apotheosised Tsar continued 
to be the Hercules' Pillars beyond which the benighted 
peasant seldom ventured before his emancipation by 
Alexander II. They marked the end of his world of ideas — 
the Chinese wall that shut in his horizon. But after that 
reform they imperceptibly began to lose their significance 
as moral or political boundaries. In September, 191 7, I 
wrote: "Now that the Tsar is thrust aside and Russia's 
gods are dead or dying, it is become manifest that there is 
no more powerful solvent of human communities than the 
dust of dead divinities. Bestial passions, formerly subdued 
by ascetic self-restraint or physical fear, are now unleashed; 
all deterrents are gone since that of capital punishment was 
abolished, and for the time being anarchy is supreme. The 
nation is suffering from delirium tremens. If Russia has not 
yet touched bottom in the Slough of Despond her frenzied 
chiefs may yet sink her deeper. Her revolutionary leaders 
have no longer a living faith in the principles that lie at the 
roots of civilised community life, and without the faith which 
justifies hope even nations cannot be saved." 

What part, one may fairly ask, had all those unheeded 
traits of the Russian people in bringing about the March 
revolution, and what were its more proximate causes? When 
and why did the minds of the people first begin to ferment 
and effervesce, and who was responsible for under-estimating 
the intensity of the fever and doing nothing to allay it? 
Does the movement which has culminated in the overthrow 
of the Tsardom and the disruption of the State involve the 



22 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

utter ruin of both, or is it only one of those violent breaks in 
the continuous development of a community which mark 
the close of an epoch of decadence and the opening of an 
era of fresh vitality and energy? Are the proletarian re- 
publics ruled by Lenin, Trotzky, and the more obscure 
administrators the types of State best adapted to the new 
cultural plane in which humanity is about to enter after the 
great world war? To suggest tentative answers to these 
questions is the main object of the following pages. 

The simplest and most reasonable account of the matter 
would seem to be that a number of widely different causes, 
racial, political, religious, and others, combined to form both 
the ethnic clay and the political mould, the material and the 
instrument, for the work of the fashioning potter, and the 
finished product could not possibly live in the democratic 
environment of to-day. Now so far as I know the part 
attributable to the inborn predispositions of the people 
has in no previous analysis been clearly stated, nor even 
the influence of institutions on their leanings, ideals, and 
moral temper. The lightning-flare of the revolution by 
revealing the ex-subjects of the Tsar in an unfamiliar, not 
to say repellent, aspect has whetted curiosity as to the 
sources whence the race drew its social life-current. And I 
have long believed that the best materials for a satisfactory 
answer to this question might be found in a study of its 
racial origins and transmitted tendencies. 

When assigning to political institutions their part in 
bringing about the great national crisis, native and foreign 
writers are wont to lay all the stress on the practical abuses 
of the administration which in the last two reigns were in 
truth not only at odds with the spirit of the age but almost 
absolutely unbearable. I venture to go further and maintain 
that not merely the human instruments but the system itself 
was vicious, and that it was easy to see that the administra- 
tion at its best, when public servants were, not indeed more 
honest, but less recklessly dishonest, when the problems 
confronting them were fewer and simpler, and when control 
by the central government was easier, was rooted in con- 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 23 

ceptions which rendered its maintenance in an enlightened 
community of nations sheer impossible. For Russia never 
ceased to be what its founders had made it, a predatory 
State without, like Prussia, and a predatory State within, 
unlike any other out of Asia. All its internal arrangements 
were adjusted to foreign conquest, which lent to its policy 
a steadfastness and uniformity that were currently attributed 
to the fixity of a grandiose Machiavellian scheme. The 
internal ordering of the country, the suppression of free 
speech, the prohibition of education, the racking of the 
peasantry, and the persecution of religious nonconformity 
were more or less effective means to the unchanging end. 
To have purified such a system from the abuses introduced 
by personal negligence, greed, or depravity would, there- 
fore, not have altered its trend nor saved the country from 
the disaster towards which it was steadily wending. 

It is impossible to approach the ethnic enigma with any 
sense of reality without allowing largely for the circumstance 
that the Russians, far from being pure Slavs, absorbed the 
various indigenous races, mostly Finnish nomads, whom 
they found in the land between the Upper Volga and the 
Oka. And the descendants of these various and disparate 
elements inherited many of the salient intellectual and moral 
as well as physical traits of the lower races, their lack of 
social cohesiveness, their leanings towards anarchism — their 
restlessness, intellectual and physical, displayed in biting 
criticism of all social and political arrangements and by an 
irresistible passion for roaming. The Russian is a born critic 
and satirist. An illiterate peasant from the remote and un- 
cultured provinces who drives a public conveyance will turn 
to his fare and in picturesque, richly-coloured phrases utter 
severe strictures on everything that is. To him nothing is 
sacred. Again, a lad from a squalid hamlet will pass through 
the school and university into the civil service, and in the 
course of his career be sent from Ryazan to Samarkand, from 
Odessa to Archangel, thus moving thousands of miles about 
the country, yet he never thinks of going back to end his 
days in his native village. In this and most other thini^s he 



24 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

offers a striking contrast to the Teuton who is hierarchical, 
attached to his birthplace, imbued with a sense of measure, 
and contented with the relative bliss of domesticity. 

The Russian is never settled; he is so frequently stung 
with the mania for travelling that it seems to be the call of 
the blood. He will sometimes rise up suddenly, start off as 
if in response to a mystic impulse, and wander for days or 
months or years. The lower orders are oftener possessed by 
this overmastering passion than their superiors. They are 
constantly changing their places of abode. It was for their 
benefit that merely nominal charges were fixed for such long 
journeys as that from Petersburg to Vladivostok or to 
Kharbin. And when they had not the wherewithal to buy 
even these cheap tickets, they would bribe the conductor 
with sixpence or a shilling to let them travel for nothing 
and to hide under the seat when the controller came around. 
Thousands of them flit from western Russia to eastern 
Siberia, others pilgrimage to Jerusalem and back again to 
their respective hamlets, then after an interval of rest they 
trudge to Kieff, afterwards to the Sviatya Gory, next to the 
northern shrines, and so on they keep roving until they lie 
down and die. Sectarians scour the country in every 
direction, preaching, teaching, proselytising. One sect has 
a rigid rule forbidding its members to tarry longer than 
three days in one place. I met one of those fanatics at the 
holy shrine Sviatya Gory many years ago and he explained 
to me how his co-religionists arranged to be together and to 
meet from time to time. For eight years he himself had 
never sojourned longer than three days anywhere. A well- 
to-do Russian whose sons were grown up would often 
distribute his property among his children, take a wallet and 
a staff, and spend the remainder of his days pilgrimaging 
from shrine to shrine. 

Nomads are not usually builders; they usually prey on 
those who are. Like the Kurdish mountaineers among whom 
I sojourned several years ago, listening to their tales of preda- 
tory expeditions against the Armenian husbandmen, they 
pillage and destroy. Love of destruction is ingrained; only 



THE RUSSIAN MIND 25 

generations can expel it from the blood. This also is a moral 
twist that often breaks through in the Russian. Take the 
merchants, for example, who formed the most conservative 
class in the Tsardom.^ When a merchant and his friends 
went out to drink, he would kick over the traces. His idea 
of amusement was to smash the costly mirrors in hotels and 
restaurants, to break the furniture, to maul the waiters or 
the proprietor, and to ask that these items be included in the 
bill. The peasants dance and skip for joy when they can 
pillage, demolish, burn. Whenever the police relaxed their 
hold, they delighted in breaking into manors, smashing the 
furniture, cutting the pictures into shreds, burning the 
houses. In the pogroms against the Jews the same passion 
for destruction overmastered and goaded them to crimes 
against property and the person. "We must destroy all the 
imperial institutions, pulverise them, leave nothing stand- 
ing," exclaimed a revolutionist, whose parents were nobles, 
to me. "And what will you put in the place of what you 
destroy?" I queried. "Nothing yet — that is until we think 
it out. But that will come in time." In 1905-6 as in 19 17 
the main achievement of the revolutionists was destruction. 
And what fiendish joy they displayed in 1905-6 in roasting 
men alive, or setting them barefoot on sheets of hot iron! 
And in 1917. . . . 

* They were fast losing this conservatism in the cities and towns before 
the war. 



CHAPTER III 
Lack of Russian Unity 

It is well to remember that the anarchist bias inherent in 
the Russian race has never been uprooted nor even systemati- 
cally countered. The bulk of the people are hardly any 
better equipped for the life-struggle than they were in the 
days when the Mongols of the Golden Horde held sway 
among them and compelled their princes to lick horses* 
slaver. 

One of the most powerful engines for preparing, maturing, 
and consummating the politico-social cataclysm was the 
university, together with the numerous tag-rag and bobtail 
of loosely-thinking, wildly-speaking humanity that centred 
around it. I had the honour to be a member of one of the 
foremost Russian universities and observed this puissant 
influence at close quarters. The university is essentially a 
western institution specially adapted to the requirements of 
western youth reared according to certain traditions and 
indoctrinated with certain beliefs. Transplanted to Russian 
soil the university brought forth unfamiliar — Dead Sea — 
fruit. And it could not well be otherwise. The Russian 
student was at bottom one of those peasants whose qualities 
and defects I have just been endeavouring to outline. En- 
dowed with marvellous receptivity, a hypercritical cast of 
mind, impatience to learn everything, combined with in- 
superable sloth 2md infirmity of purpose, he was filled with 
awe for science, took for granted western theories, principles, 
and ideas, and applied them as standards of comparison to 
the institutions and doctrines of his own country. Capable 
of a passion for the abstract he worshipped western science, 
or rather pseudo-science which he understood more easily, 
as a tribesman on the shores of Lake Baikal worships his 
fetish. For synthesis, for constructive work, he lacked the 
materials, the training, and the capacity. 

26 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 27 

These young men, most of whom never completed the 
high-school curriculum, were turned loose upon the country 
to sow seeds of discontent and rebellion whithersoever they 
went. Looking around him the student perceived the vast 
contrast between the western principles which he revered 
as dogmas and those that underlay the odious ordering of 
things in the Tsardom. And his soul revolted. In economics 
no law was respected. There was no consideration for the 
peasantry on whom the dead weight of the Empire pressed. 
The masses were kept not only without political rights but 
in utter ignorance of the circumstance that they had any 
claim to them. And the embargo was issued with wanton 
cynicism. The peasantry was no more than a wealth-creating 
machine for the behoof of the ruling class, and the rulers 
took so little thought even of their own less pressing interests 
that they failed to keep the machine properly lubricated or 
in smoothly working condition. And everywhere the same 
piratical instincts of the autocracy and its instruments met 
the eye. When the student, who was himself a peasant and 
whose father and uncles and brothers were still on the land, 
had assimilated the doctrines of the west and transmuted 
them into a religious creed, his feelings towards the men and 
the institutions that had systematically violated them for 
centuries and had ground his own class in the dust were 
those of the religious fanatic who would fain condemn 
heresiarchs even on earth to the unimaginable tortures of 
eternal damnation. Nothing that the autocracy or its con- 
federate, the bureaucracy, did was in his eyes other than 
a heinous sin. The administration was constitutionally 
incapable of a noble, a praiseworthy, or even a morally 
indifferent act. 

That combination of the eastern political system with the 
scientific ideas and progressive principles of the west, 
working upon the Russian mind with its peculiar bent, 
produced the revolutionary spirit as inevitably as the mixing 
in certain proportions of charcoal, sulphur, and saltpetre 
produces gunpowder. 

The intelligentsia had no roots in the people. Its members 



28 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

were severed and sundered from it, but they resembled one 
of those preaching orders which were founded in the Middle 
Ages whose energy and success largely depended on their 
complete detachment from every class and concrete interest. 
The scraps of western theories and systems which they 
scattered broadcast over Russia about "the rights of man," 
the origins of autocracy, the only true basis of human society, 
the necessity of liberty of conscience as a correlate of per- 
sonal responsibility, and other matters were totally ignored 
by the peasant and the merchant classes, but became a 
source of inspiration to individuals among them and served 
with frequent modifications as the revolutionary creed. The 
intelligentsia was the order from which two mutually hostile 
bodies were recruited, the apostles of revolution and the 
leavening elements of the bureaucracy. It was the intelli- 
gentsia who sowed the revolutionary seed and watered it. 
It was from their midst that schoolmasters and professors, 
physicians, men of letters, publicists, lawyers, were taken, 
most of whom contributed something to the general ferment. 
It was especially the publicists, journalists, and literary men 
who did most of the spade work and sowed the seed which 
at last sprang up in the shape of armed men. They dealt 
in abstractions, operated with western theories, transplanted 
fragments of Hegel, Marx, Kautsky, Mill, Buckle, to Russian 
soil and pushed each proposition to the Ultima Thule of its 
consequences. Although they belonged to different schools 
of thought they united for purposes of destruction. The 
Kadets, who deserved their reputation of being the best 
organised party in the Empire, had no firm hold on the 
nation because they were not of it; they could not place 
themselves at its angle of vision, were incapable of appre- 
ciating its world philosophy, were not rooted in the people. 
Hence they did not enlist the peasant or the working man 
in their party and stood only for themselves. When the 
tillers of the soil and the factory hands had each formed its 
own organisation, then the Kadets took them as allies. 
But an alliance may be abandoned at any moment, especially 
in Russia. 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 29 

The dissolution of the Russian Empire may unmistakably 
be traced back to the shape definitely given to the Tsardom 
by its two eminent founders, Ivan and Peter. Its character, 
internal and external, was incompatible with its survival into 
a democratic era of European development. For internally 
it was a growing realm with serfdom for its groundwork, 
and even after the emancipation of the serfs it still remained 
in spirit what it so long had been in fact. The bulk of the 
population toiled and moiled for the privileged few and was 
treated as an inferior race, and was hindered systematically 
from rising as a class to the level of its rulers in any sphere. 
Externally it was a predatory society which looked for its 
present well-being and future prosperity to the triumph of 
force, and bent all its energies to the transformation of its 
resources into instruments of offence and defence. In a 
word the development of the Tsardom postulated a state 
of warfare with its neighbours and a condition of chronic 
artificial inequality among its own peoples, and all its arrange- 
ments, financial, economic, military, and political, were care- 
fully accommodated to those two aspects. This was nothing 
new to the people who between the years 1228 and 1462 
had waged ninety civil wars and a hundred and fifty-eight 
foreign campaigns. 

Roughly speaking there are two main types of States 
which one may distinguish by the names European and 
Asiatic. The former may be said to concentrate its energies 
upon the ordering of domestic affairs for the behoof of the 
community. It creates efficient machinery for the purpose 
of maintaining order and insuring the safety of the person 
and of property, translates the customs formed by necessity, 
expediency, or taste into laws and institutions, and has for 
its real, as well as its ostensible, aim the general progress of 
the whole people. The Asiatic State on the other hand, 
solicitous chiefly alx)ut foreign wars and international 
relations, takes little thought about the internal arrange- 
ments of the nation, the training of upright administrators, 
the adjustment of institutions to the temper of the people 
and to the permanent conditions that govern their develop- 



30 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

ment, and scorns to economise labour by distributing roles 
and setting up appropriate organs to harmonise order and 
progress. Assuming that the international community lives 
and will continue to live in a state of latent or open war, 
one of its main objects is to conquer foreign territory and 
to exploit foreign peoples and countries. In essence this is 
the idea of Hohenzollern rule, but without its redeeming 
features of just administration, national education, and State 
encouragement to commerce, industry, literature, and art. 
It was in accordance with this simplicist conception that the 
Mongols of the Golden Horde, having subjected Russia, 
left things there just as it had found them, spending no 
thought on assimilation or denationalisation, contented with 
imposing a tribute on the defeated people and making the 
native prince their chief collector of that annual impost. 
The Turks in like manner when they annexed the territory 
they now occupy made no systematic endeavour to de- 
nationalise the natives or exercise permanent control over 
domestic affairs. In all such matters the people enjoyed a 
large measure of liberty and their conquerors exploited them 
economically. And the Russian State was modelled on the 
Asiatic.^ 

This had not always been the case. The first beginnings 
of the political community in Russia — during the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries when the tribes were homogeneous 
and purely Slavs — took place on European lines, and the 
Grand Dukes of Kieff were admitted into the family of the 
eastern emperors and the western kings. But in time Kieff - 
having been captured and destroyed the inhabitants of the 
Dnieper valley migrated to the north-east, intermarried with 
the Finnish nomads of the country between the Upper 
Volga and the Oka, and the resultant of the blend was the 
hybrid Great Russian race. To this day their characteristics 
are still imperfectly understood. It is not sufficiently borne 

* Shtshedrin's satirical sketches throw a flood of light on the predatory 
nature of the Tsardom, and in particular one satire entitled The Task- 
kentians. 

' In the year 1240. 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 31 

in mind that the Finns whom these Slavs from the south 
assimilated were nomads and what I should like to term 
a-political, that is, they evinced no desire or ability to form 
themselves into compact communities viable and self- 
defensive. At any rate one hears nothing of any states 
formed by them on the Volga. Personal interests, family 
feuds, fighting, hunting, trekking, and singing the legendary 
feats of great warriors and magicians would appear to have 
called forth and absorbed their energies. This impression 
is not materially altered by what we know of the develop- 
ment of the Finns in the one political society to which they 
have given their name. It is true that the principality of 
Finland was governed first by the Swedes and then by the 
Russians, and is only now become independent, and this 
condition of subjection may partly account for the fact that 
they left to the Swedes the task of carrying social and 
political progress a stage further. This spiritual leadership 
of the Scandinavian continued unbroken throughout the 
Russian domination. 

The Tsar's rule over the principality was at first Asiatic 
in type in the sense that it abandoned to the people them- 
selves the work and responsibility of administering their 
own affairs. But of the two races in the country only the 
Scandinavians bestirred themselves to some purpose. It 
was they who acted as cultural seed-bearers from the west 
to the north-east. When the Finnish nationalist movement 
started, some of the leading Swedes, in order to get more 
elbow-room for action, changed their Scandinavian names 
into Finnish equivalents as the Jews and the Germans do in 
Hungary, but the ethnic leaven still remained the same. 
Many years ago I had a long talk on this subject with the 
one statesman Finland produced, Mechelin, and he listened 
with interest, and I think I may add with acquiescence, to 
this view of the matter which I put before him in outline. 
Once the real Finnish democracy took or received freedom 
of action, after the fall of the Tsardom, any stirring of sound 
political sense or of organising capacity that may have been 
felt among the Finnish elements of the republic were lost 



32 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

in the welter of anarchy that ensued. The great war put the 
political aptitudes of peoples and regimes to a severe test, 
and the surprises that have followed the ordeal are, to put it 
mildly, humiliating. It looks as though certain European 
peoples are constitutionally averse to social collectivity, and 
that force alone can keep them together. 

It was with these a-political, nomadic Finnish tribes, then, 
that the Slav wanderers from the south intermarried, and it 
was from them that the new Russian people, which can hardly 
since then be regarded as Slav,^ inherited some of their more 
striking traits. The invasion of the Tartars, who kept the 
country in subjection for two centuries, also made a note- 
worthy contribution to the influences that moulded the 
Russian people. It is true that the Khans who lived and 
ruled at a distance never meddled in the home concerns of 
their vassals, contenting themselves with a yearly tribute. 
But they left permanent representatives, listened to com- 
plaints made by one Russian prince against another, and 
encouraged secret intrigues. It was during this long servi- 
tude that the people became past masters in guile, trickery, 
intrigue, bribery, and all the tactics of the weak who have 
to defend themselves against the strong. It was during this 
period that the Moscow princes familiarised themselves with 
the Tartar type of State and imbibed its spirit of conquest 
without, its scorn for a living elastic organisation within to 
preside over and shape general progress on pacific lines. 
And Ivan III. embodied these exotic ideas in the simple kind 
of community which he established. He beheaded all the 
Boyars who were obnoxious to him, broke the power of the 
class as a factor in the realm, incited one set of his subjects 
to decimate another, and confronted the benighted popula- 
tion with an absolute monarch whose behests and whims 
were carried out by a body of soldiers — opritchina — who 
shed the blood of proscribed individuals at the tyrant's nod. 

Bound by oath to carry out all the monarch's commands 
the opritchniki were an agency apart, whose interests were 
different from, nay, contrary to, those of the population. 
*The White Russians are undoubtedly pure Slavs, 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 33 

That aloofness is expressed by the very name opritchina.* 
And that extra-national force contained the germs of the 
formidable army established later by Peter the Great, and 
also of the bureaucracy which this emperor modelled on his 
army. These are the institutions which imparted to the 
Russian State that peculiar character which has been unfold- 
ing itself to the eyes of a wondering Europe ever since. Even 
after the triumph of the Bolsheviki, whose doctrine is interna- 
tional pacifism, the relations of the State to the population 
remained what it had been under the Tsars, and Ivan's 
opritchniki were represented by Lenin's Red Guards. 

Peter was unquestionably a political genius, but the 
material in which he worked, the mould fashioned by his 
predecessors, the pressure of foreign wars and internal 
troubles, and the manner of life he led made it impossible 
for him to delve deep enough into the political soil to lay the 
foundation of a new structure. He found the Asiatic type 
of State ready to his hand as it had been handed down by 
his predecessors, and he set himself to accommodate it to 
the changed requirements. That was all. Thus he perceived 
the necessity of a fleet and of a well-trained army and he 
provided both. He also grasped the need of a body of public 
servants who should keep the army and navy provided with 
necessities and should conduct the general business of the 
nation. And for his model he chose the most efficient 
bureaucracy of Europe — that of Prussia. But the predatory 
nature of Peter's Tsardom cannot be disputed. He equipped 
it with new and temporarily effective organs, strove to 
modernise its administration, and brought it formally into 
line with its neighbours. But he left the essence of the old 
Asiatic State intact. Peter's way of grafting the new bureau- 
cratic institution on the State resembled that of the Slavs 
of Novgorod who in the ninth century despatched an 
embassy to tlie Varangers inviting them to come and put 
things in order and rule in Russia. Peter likewise turned 
to the west, employed foreigners wherever he could, and in 

*Opritchnik means an outsider, an outlaw, one who keeps or is kept 
aloof. 



34 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

particular favoured Germans whose capacity for organisation 
he appreciated. 

From those days onward, the Germans played a pre- 
dominant part in the Russian civil administration, in the 
army and navy, at the court, in schools and universities, in 
science and letters, in journalism, in trade and industry, 
everywhere, in a word, except in the Church. They have 
often been accused of acquiring the defects of the Russians 
and of contributing to demoralise these. It is true that like 
the Russians they did not scruple to cheat the treasury when 
opportunity offered, but justice compels one to add that 
they had at least a certain sense of measure which the Russian 
bureaucrat too often lacked. They sometimes appropriated 
funds, but generally limited the sums to their actual needs 
instead of making them commensurate with their grandiose 
opportunities. They served their Russian sovereign loyally, 
favoured men of their own race and religion, and stamped a 
Teuton impress on most things in the Tsardom. In the 
army, in the navy, in the administration of provinces, in the 
central ministries, in the schools and universities, on the 
estates of the great landowners, at the head of factories, on 
the boards of companies and banks, in apothecaries' shops 
and bakeries — were Germans. Whithersoever you went the 
majority of the men who transacted Russia's business, 
public and private, had German manners, spoke the German 
tongue; one must also confess that on the whole they did 
not disappoint the expectations of the Tsars who favoured 
and protected them. 

Alexander III. was not of this number. From the line 
followed by his predecessors he swerved perceptibly. He 
entertained a dislike for the Teutons and, indeed, for all 
foreigners. For he was a nationalist and held that orthodoxy, 
pan-slavism, and autocracy constitute the trinity, belief in 
which would one day raise the Russian people to the highest 
pinnacle of glory, and that no foreigner could worship at its 
shrine. Hence he withdrew many of the privileges there- 
tofore enjoyed by his German and other non-Russian 
subjects. It has been alleged that his excellent intentions 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 35 

led to disastrous results, that the Russification of the national 
services was far from being a benefit, was, in fact, a serious 
disadvantage, not only to the civil administration, but also 
to the army and the navy. This contention has been so lately 
put forward that the materials for dealing with it decisively 
are not yet available. 

Thus the builders of the State, famous and obscure, 
stamped the Tsardom with the impress of Asia, infused into 
the organism they were forming a predatory soul, and accus- 
tomed it to look for honour, glory, and even the satisfaction 
of growing economic needs to territorial expansion at the 
cost of its neighbours. They poured around those who 
thought, spoke, and acted for the community an atmosphere 
that warped their judgment and obscured all issues alien to 
the only kind of progress which they were capable of appre- 
ciating. The standards by which they gauged international 
and national situations and crises, and the principles by 
which they shaped their foreign relations, were adjusted to 
the ideals set before the community at its origin. This 
direction, long ago imposed upon the main current of 
national life, continued down to the reign of Alexander I. 
when for the first time it was slightly checked by economic 
forces pressing upon the population at home and cutting the 
tether which had fastened the peasants to the soil. But the 
spirit persisted even then, and the Slavophil party with 
Aksakoff at its head, which gradually drove Alexander's 
pacific government into war with Turkey, was undoubtedly 
the true exponent of "Russia's" aspirations. For the political 
community under the Tsar, like that of Athens or Sparta in 
the days of Plato or Pausanias, was restricted to the privi- 
leged minority of the population, and extended only to a 
fraction of these. In these circumstances every one of 
Russia's public men gifted with real vision, whose political 
energies were suffused with the "national" spirit, took 
refuge from insoluble internal problems in venturesome 
foreign enterprises. That was the mainspring of Plehve's 
eagerness to launch out into a war against Japan, and of 
Sazonoff's reluctance to allow Austria-Hungary to elbow his 



36 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

country out of the Balkan Peninsula, of Pobiedonostseflf's 
curtailment of religious liberty, of the educational limita- 
tions introduced by Tolstoy, of Vyshnegradsky's exploitation 
of the peasantry, of the financial system based on the in- 
ebriety of the people. The policy of all these statesmen, 
however opposed it might seem to reason, stood rooted in 
the deepest sentiment of the articulate community and 
harmonised with the spirit infused into it by its celebrated 
founders. The almost unflinching persistence of the different 
governments in this predatory line of action suggested to 
foreign observers two absurd legends, one respecting the 
deep and far-reaching vision of Russian statesmanship 
deliberately concentrating its attention and its energies upon 
a remote aim, and the other respecting an imaginary testa- 
ment of Peter the Great enjoining on his successors the 
steady expansion of the Empire at the cost of its weaker 
neighbours. In truth the ministers who transacted Russia's 
foreign business from Peter's death down to the deposition 
of Nicholas II. were, with the sole exception of Witte, very 
humdrum bureaucrats who themselves were borne along on 
the unseen current that moved beneath the surface of events. 
This a-moral system, which differed considerably for the worse 
from the Prussian, had one vulnerable point through which 
the Tsardom was bound to be hit mortally in the course of 
time and most automatically by the mere progress of Euro- 
pean civilisation. The ethnic fragments and the Russian 
classes and masses instead of being fused were, as we saw, 
very loosely bound together with military withes by the 
State. Cut these withes and the seemingly compact bundle 
falls to pieces. And the adoption of western institutions 
would necessarily sever these ties and break up the Empire. 
That was the ever-present danger which waxed more and 
more imminent and menacing as time went on and the joists 
and girders of the days of yore showed signs of giving way. 
Some of the rulers perceived it clearly; others felt it 
instinctively. A few were for borrowing props and supports 
from the west; others for fortifying the ancient structure 
congruously with the style of architecture in which it was 



I 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 37 

built. But the fatal outcome of these alternating expedients 
was discernible, was in fact perceived by Witte, the one 
commanding statesman possessed by Russia since the days 
of Peter. 

Autocracy was as much a religion as a political system. 
Rooted in theocracy it claimed to regulate life as a whole, 
taking in every one of its needs and faculties. Therefore, it 
held together and could not be divided into political, 
economic, and religious parts. To swerve from it in one 
particular was to break with all. This master fact was at the 
root of Pobiedonostseff's policy. None the less Alexander I. 
was at one time prepared to introduce liberal institutions 
on the advice of his minister Speransky. But later on more 
logical spirits like Pobiedonostseff and his fellow workers 
would fain have it fenced in by coercive legislation. To 
them it was evident that so long as the bureaucracy ruled 
there was no room in the country for any other influential 
institution. Moreover, any liberal institutions accorded to 
the nation would constitute an irresistible lever in the hands 
of the non-Russian nationalities, such as the Poles, the 
Germans, the Lithuanians, the Finns, whose culture was 
superior to that of the ruling race. On the other hand 
pressure of all kinds was rendering a modernisation of the 
State a necessity. Between Scylla and Charybdis a middle 
course, proposed years before by the eminent Moscow 
journalist Katkoff, was struck out and certain western insti- 
tutions were accorded to the population of central Russia 
but refused to the more advanced inhabitants of the borders. 
Nay more, many of the rights which these had theretofore 
enjoyed were withdrawn from them. This sorry pettifogging 
merely served to disclose the straits to which the autocracy 
was reduced. 

The first Alexander's innovations were symptomatic rather 
than real, and their visible sign was the Council of the 
Empire — a legislative body appointed by the Tsar to study, 
recommend, and draft bills which the monarch vetoed or 
ratified at will. It was the substitute devised at the eleventh 
hour for a legislative chamber which the Tsar had con- 



38 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

templated introducing. His successor, Nicholas I., felt the 
urge of economic needs and might, had he lived, been forced 
to set the serfs at liberty as a mere matter of material 
interest, but the reform was reserved for Alexander II. As 
soon as this potentate had emancipated the serfs, as the first 
of a series of reform measures, the inevitable happened: 
autocracy as represented by the central authorities lost its 
grasp of the reins of power which fell into the hands of a 
myriad of obscure and irresponsible individuals throughout 
the Empire, and the framework of the State became top- 
heavy. 

That courageous act let loose a number of ethnic forces 
by which in time a new Russia or rather several new Russias 
were imperceptibly fashioned. The nuclei of the new 
entities were formed by the freed peasants, their ecstatic 
worshippers among the "intellectuals," and by the non- 
Russian nationalities who eagerly joined in the subdued 
agitation against an obsolete and oppressive regime. In the 
ensuing semi-articulate demand for the abolition of the 
autocracy — though not perhaps for all that it connoted — pro- 
gressive Russians were at one with Poles, Jews, Armenians, 
and Moslems. The German element alone continued to do 
battle for Tsarism. 

The relief accorded to the serfs made one far-reaching 
change in the administrative machinery: it removed the 
great landed proprietors, the nobility, from the position they 
had occupied theretofore in their collective capacities as 
intermediaries between the central government and the 
masses. That displacement called for a corrective, as other- 
wise the power once vested in the head departments would 
be scattered all over Russia and dissociated from responsi- 
bility. In the minds of Alexander 11. and his principal 
advisers the correlate of his great reform was the extension 
of the powers of the newly created zemstvos, the forging 
of an organic link between them and the ancient institutions, 
and the creation of political representation. My former 
colleague and friend. Professor Maxim Kovalevsky, held 
that if those intentions had been carried out the Russian 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 39 

mediaeval State "would have been transformed" into one 
that harmonised with the requirements of modern civilisa- 
tion. Perhaps it would, but only, I venture to hold, as a 
preliminary to the break-up of Russia. Kovalevsky himself 
admitted that the people of Russia were not ripe for such 
reforms as direct, equal, and universal suffrage. If then it 
had been established the State would have been dismembered 
by the centrifugal force of its nationalities w^hich constituted 
52 per cent, of the total population, whereas if it were with- 
held the effort to wrest it from the Government would have 
provoked coercion and revolution. Moreover, the bureau- 
cracy was the backbone of the Russian State, and it brooked 
the creation of no institutions that could impair its influence 
or diminish its prestige. No one who saw deeply into the 
spirit of the Tsardom at any epoch of its existence could 
fail to perceive how difficult and dangerous it would have 
been to tackle the work of transforming it congruously with 
modern requirements. Witte might possibly have succeeded 
if he had been given a free hand, ample time, and especially 
if he had been allowed to begin under the reign of 
Alexander III. 

The reform movement that now began was discreet and 
timorous by compulsion, but aggressive and intolerant 
wherever it had scope. It claimed the allegiance of every 
member of the intelligentsia in every walk of life and 
punished non-conformity wherever it manifested itself, not 
only in politics, but in literature, science, and art whither 
politics had to take refuge from persecution. He who was 
not with the Liberals was against them, and chastised 
accordingly. Some of the consequences of this absolutism 
were incongruous. A Congress of Physicians seriously 
declared in 1905 that medical men could not properly attend 
to their professional duties so long as the power of the 
autocrat was not limited. A municipality passed a resolution 
to the effect that the high mortality in southern Russia was 
a direct and inevitable result of the antiquated form of 
government. A congress of elementary school teachers laid 
it down that to teach reading and writing with success to 



40 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

children was, and would continue to be, impossible until 
absolute government was abolished. On the other hand 
some of the men who earnestly desired to prolong the days 
of the Russian Empire, to revive its waning strength, to keep 
its ethnic elements and disparate classes together, turned to 
foreign battlefields in search of territorial expansion and dis- 
traction. Aksakoff, Pobiedonostseff, Plehve, Sazonoff, were 
all true representatives of Holy Russia. That instinct came 
from the deepest spirit of the men who had built up the 
Tsardom. 

Witte's statesmanship differed widely from theirs. It may 
be described as a systematic endeavour to conciliate and 
satisfy the two tendencies, the democratisation of the regime 
and expansion abroad. Hence it was essentially synthetic. 
I think I am fairly interpreting my friend's central idea by 
likening it to that of Frederic when he proceeded to make 
Prussia thoroughly independent without and well compacted 
and united within. Witte himself never used any such 
ambitious comparison even when thinking aloud in my 
presence, but the likeness disengages itself automatically 
from much that he did say. In his confidential talks with 
me he often emphasised the remarkable fact that Russia 
occupied a place in the hierarchy of nations to which her 
specific gravity nowise entitled her. And if ever the dis- 
covery were made by the Kaiser, he added, its consequences 
might be calamitous. The Tsardom was weak, disunited, 
ready to explode into tiny fragments, and a campaign, 
especially against a power like Germany, would reveal this 
condition very quickly. Therefore it must be shunned — all 
wars must be shunned because of that fatal revelation to 
which they would lead. Russia's economic needs in the 
East could be provided for by pacific penetration and rail- 
way building, and her requirements in the West might best 
be supplied by a coalition with Germany, Austria, and 
France. Those being the great land powers, their interests 
could be made to run fairly parallel with each other, 
whereas those of Great Britain were often peculiar to 
herself alone. Still the object of the league would not be 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 41 

war but a stable peace and no territorial changes were 
contemplated. 

In the meantime he would have set about changing the 
domestic regime as radically as appeared feasible without 
provoking violent reactions. 

Witte's method consisted of a series of economic, social, 
and political changes gradually adopted. For one thing he 
would have educated the entire people and endeavoured to 
qualify the State, or a department of it, to discharge the 
function of social direction. Why, he asked, were the Ger- 
mans so much superior to their neighbours in general and 
technical education? Because of the solicitude of their 
rulers? Were their rulers distinguished from those of other 
people by their moral ideals ? Nowise. But they had clearer 
vision, greater initiative, and were possessed of faith in the 
dogma that the destinies, if not the character, of men are modi- 
fiable without end by education, instruction, and social direc- 
tion. He himself caused technical schools and colleges to be 
opened and endowed whenever and wherever it was possible. 

Witte grasped the master fact that the emancipation of 
the serfs was the liberation of an elemental force which like 
fire or water must be kept under control if it is not to become 
destructive. He knew that it would entail a sequence of 
fateful innovations which according to the form imparted 
to them by the legislator might make or mar the Empire. 
He was eager, therefore, to produce a set of conditions, 
economic and political, in which the newly qualified elements 
of the community could grow and equip themselves morally 
and intellectually for the leading part they would one day 
be called on to play in Russia and perhaps in Europe. And 
he desired that the central authorities should be dispensed 
from the barren task of entering into the details of local 
needs. To say to the myriads of freed men as did Pobie- 
donostseff, Dmitry, Tolstoy, and Plchve, "Thus far and no 
further," smacked of the spells employed by the Boxers in 
China to prevent bullets from entering their bodies. The 
State must turn over a new leaf. Education was become a 
manifest necessity; it had been discouraged, penalised. 



42 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Political enfranchisement was a corollary of emancipation 
from serfdom. The press had been forbidden to discuss it. 
The initiation of the peasants into the duties of citizenship, 
into collective work carried on under personal responsibility, 
was a preliminary condition of national progress, but even 
to moot such an innovation has been punished as treason. 
At the very least freedom in the choice of means by which 
the emancipated millions might wish to satisfy their con- 
sciences and save their souls was a postulate of healthy, 
moral development, but not only was it persistently with- 
held from the mooshik, it was not accorded even to the 
intellectuals. The one was forced to remain in the State 
church because without compulsion the State church, now 
hardly more than a police department, might soon be devoid 
of a congregation, and the other were only permitted to 
choose between orthodoxy and atheism, and most of them 
chose atheism. 

From this coercive system Witte turned away in angry 
disgust. With repression he had no sympathy. But his 
policy was inspired by considerations more respectable and 
more conducive to social well-being than mere personal 
likes or dislikes. He saw clearly the thinness of the bonds 
that held the various nationalities, and the various classes, 
and the populations of the various territories and climates 
together in a single community which had no common de- 
nominator, no point of convergence but a frail and irresolute 
monarch. Intuitively he gauged the force of the national 
bent towards territorial expansion, and by experience he 
knew that economic pressure would soon compel the rulers 
to choose between a series of reforms with which foreign 
conquests and even the perpetuation of the regime would be 
incompatible, and a system of coercion which would cause 
Russia to be outlawed by the nations of the world. And his 
way out of the difficulty, had he been authorised to take it, 
was to begin to introduce the most urgent reforms without 
delay, to place them once for all beyond the reach of the 
reactionary; to substitute law for caprice; to safeguard the 
liberty and cultivate the dignity of the individual; and parallel 



I 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 43 

with these measures to strengthen by legislation the levelling 
influence of the economic forces which his financial and 
industrial policy was rendering operative. Towards the non- 
Russian races, whose national spirit had been intensified and 
made aggressive by persecution, and who were now less 
likely than ever to coalesce voluntarily with the ruling 
people, he advocated a policy of generosity, a standing appeal 
to their nobler instincts and solidarity of interests. Thus he 
would have conciliated the Finns and quickened their 
advance along the road of civilisation. To the Poles he 
would have conceded a large measure of real autonomy. 
From the Jews he would have struck oflF their degrading 
fetters. The Armenians and all the other Caucasian peoples 
he would have left in peace. Lastly he would have striven 
to still the nation's greed for territorial aggrandisement by 
introducing intensive culture among the peasantry and thus 
removing one of its causes — dearth of land — ^by fostering 
Russian industries, and by opening vast new markets in the 
East for Russia's produce through railways and '^peaceful 
penetration." That was the key to his grandiose schemes of 
railway building and also to his less commendable dealings 
with China. On those lines Witte's policy was laid. How he 
applied it to the grouping of powers, European and Asiatic, 
is another question with which I am not now concerned. 

I do not for a moment suggest that Witte ever seriously 
approached this comprehensive problem of Russia's past in 
relation to her future as a whole. This would have been 
wasted effort in the reigns either of Alexander III. or 
Nicholas II., and he was not a man to throw away his time 
in unproductive speculation. But I know that some of its 
aspects were always before him and none of them was wholly 
missed. He had, however, greater and more numerous 
obstacles to surmount than any of his predecessors, not only 
because he was swimming against the main Russian stream, 
but also because his promotion to the highest position in the 
Empire drew upon him the opposition, the hatred, the 
calumnies, and the insidious machinations of a host of 
enemies to whom the last of the Tsars readily gave ear. 



44 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Under Alexander III. the great statesman was not permitted 
to venture even upon a temporary excursion into the domain 
of political reforms, and any headway he may have made in 
that direction was indirect. And to my knowledge Nicholas 
II. assured the chiefs of two States from whose lips I received 
the statement that he never from the first had the slightest 
confidence in Witte, never willingly gave him a free hand, 
nor trusted him as a public servant or a private individual. 

I often told Witte that his hopes and aspirations were 
doomed to disappointment, and his natural sagacity made 
him aware of the fact. But he never wholly abandoned hope. 
He used to say that if Alexander III. had lived, or if his son 
Michael had succeeded him or were yet to come to the 
throne, much might be changed for the better and Russia's 
international position strengthened. My objection was that 
it was much too late. The Tsardom's sands were running 
down. And he sometimes agreed with me during those fits 
of dejection which often came over him of late years, 
especially after an animated talk with the Emperor or the 
discovery of a fresh intrigue against himself. 

The thin flickering flame of democracy was fed with solid 
fuel when the army ceased to be professional. To my knowl- 
edge the significance and weight of this innovation as a 
factor in the destinies of Russia was not discerned at the 
time or since. Witte never once alluded to it. And yet, to 
my thinking, it imparted a tremendous impulse to the forces 
that first weakened and then broke up the Tsarist State. 
The professional army was a terrible weapon, an enlarged 
and perfected opritchina whose units were just human 
enough to take and execute orders, but were machines in 
every other respect. A soldier served for a quarter of a 
century. When he donned the uniform he quitted not only his 
family but the civil community for good. He became a unit 
in an organism, a function. He was severed from the nation 
as were Ivan's opritchniki, tempered, trained, attuned to 
a life apart. Military discipline was as severe as it must have 
been in the days of Rameses of Egypt or Nabonassar of 
Babylon. Punishments were ferocious, fiendish. Soldiers 



LACK OF RUSSIAN UNITY 45 

thus kneaded and moulded could do great things and did 
them. For they were soldiers and nothing more. They loved 
only to fight, and had ceased to be peasants once they joined 
the ranks. There were no reserve officers then. An officer 
had as little to do with the people as had the soldier. Neither 
officer nor private felt any solidarity with the people. But 
with the change of the system of recruitment, the whole 
character of the army changed and also its capacity for 
military achievement. Compare closely the wars of Peter, 
Catherine, Paul, Alexander I., and Nicholas I. with the 
Turkish war of 1877 and the Manchurian campaign of 
1904-5 and the difference will stand forth in relief. That, 
however, was the only one and the least momentous 
consequence of the change. 

The democratic method of universal and short service 
having been established the traits of the peasantry were 
transplanted to the army and navy: the querulous, critical, 
satirical vein, the lack of finality in obedience and in every- 
thing, the anarchic tendency in a word. And as time went 
on the efficiency of the Russian soldier diminished per- 
ceptibly. Their generals, too, seem to have remained below 
the former high standard. But what is more to the point, 
the old army of Nicholas I. would have interposed an im- 
passable barrier to a popular revolution. Under Nicholas II. 
the March explosion would have been stifled if the army 
had been opposed to it. But the peasant army which was 
sent against the German invaders was not steeled like the 
warriors who had made Russia's name famous in the 
eighteenth and in the early days of the nineteenth centuries. 
They hated war, were impatient to return to their fields, 
and took the first opportunity — when capital punishment 
was abolished — to fling their rifles in the bushes and go 
back to their families. And when appealed to by their 
hungry brethren to turn their rifles against the authorities 
and to merit the long promised land, they hearkened to the 
call and exploded the legend of the Little Father. 

Those were some of the remoter and deeper causes of the 
Russian revolution. Their force was enhanced by the im- 



46 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

politic action of the Tsar's ministers in allowing the relations 
between the central authorities and the masses — now grow- 
ing more conscious and exacting — to be broken by myriads 
of irresponsible and unscrupulous petty officials instead of 
charging the zemstvos and the municipalities with the work 
of carrying them on. For the scandalous improbity of these 
unjust stewards embittered the peasants and the workmen, 
fanned the embers of discontent, and materially aided the 
professional revolutionists of the intelligentsia. It was this 
enormous disadvantage of the autocracy and the instinct of 
self-preservation which it quickened that moved its cham- 
pions to overstep all bounds and found an order of men for 
whose iniquity western languages have no adequate name — 
men who enlisted conspirators, hatched damnable plots, 
coaxed and paid young lads to execute them, and as oppor- 
tunity serv^ed either seized these tools and sent them to 
death or looked on while they committed the wanton 
abominations assigned to them. Reading or hearing about 
the foul deeds of miscreants like Azeff, Gapon, and Rasputin, 
and of the torture and horrible deaths of their victims, I am 
reminded of the lines which the poet Swinburne wrote at 
my request on an article of mine about Russian prisons: 

"Earth is hell, and hell bows down before the Tsar, 
All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim 
Him whose Empire lives to match its fiery fame. 
Nay, perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done, 
Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun, 
Hell recoils heart-stricken; horror worse than Hell 
Darkens earth and sickens heaven ; life knows the spell, 
Shudders, quails, and sinks — or, filled with fiercer breath, 
Rises red in arms devised of darkling death. 
Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame, 
Call aloud on justice by her darker name . . ." 

Fortnightly Review, August, 1890, p. 166. 



CHAPTER IV 

The Tsardom 

Among all the odd freaks in the pohtical domain, compara- 
ble, say, to the leaning tower of Pisa in the architectural sphere, 
the most amazing was the mighty Tsardom. For it was 
a synthesis of contradictories. A number of ethnic frag- 
ments without inner cohesiveness, with mutually conflicting 
tendencies, were loosely fastened together and wrought 
into a vast political organism. Out of a race prone to anarchy 
and devoid of political sense, an omnipotent bureaucracy 
was formed which claimed to regulate not only the business 
of the State, but the acts, the words, and the thoughts of the 
individual. Assuredly it was no small feat to knead a 
peasantry that loathes w^ar and abhors discipline into one 
of the finest armies in Europe. Yet it was achieved by the 
Russian Tsars who preceded Alexander II. Viewed from 
without, the strong amalgam as contrasted with the small- 
ness of its parts, suggested the pudding stone that consists of 
rounded pebbles embedded in flinty matrix. Contemplated 
from within, it might be likened to a political cord of sand, 
twisted by some mysterious spell. This rope of three strands, 
orthodoxy, autocracy, bureaucracy, or, as the Government 
put it, God, the T»ar, and the fatherland, with their army 
and bureaucracy, held together the mutually hostile elements 
of the Empire. And the strongest of the three was the 
bureaucracy which with its sixteen grades was created by 
Peter the Great after the Prussian model. Before it became 
a mere parasite, the bureaucracy democratised the nobility, 
ennobled individual peasants, and prepared the population 
for the action of the Church, thus enabling the Empire to 
attain high place in the hierarchy of nations. So powerful 
had this political entity grown by the middle of the eight- 
eenth century that Catherine II. said, "If I could but reign 
two hundred years, all Europe would have to bend its neck 

^1 



48 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

under the sceptre of Russia." Yet the bulk of Russians were 
confirmed pacifists and inarticulate anarchists. After the 
death of Nicholas I. the autocracy was never more than a 
name for a regime which, itself free from checks and in- 
dependent of control, pressed heavily on the population and 
saddled one man with moral responsibility for decisions 
which he always lacked the data and often the will to take, 
while reducing him to the status of a figure-head. 

The negative side of the Russian bureaucracy should not 
prevent us from seeing that it had a positive side as well, 
which was especially apparent when Peter first instituted it, 
or that the services it rendered to the country — in a clumsy, 
dilatory way — were real, and to a certain extent, educative. 
The wrench by which the imperial reformer dragged Russia 
from the deep rut into which she had fallen on to the high- 
way of cultural progress unleashed powerful forces which 
might have shattered the State fabric but for the moderating 
action of the bureaucracy. It was the Tshin,^ too, that 
brought out the constructive quality of Peter's measures 
and gave form to the rude ideas of justice and morality 
which assuredly underlay his fundamental innovation. The 
Russian bureaucracy, foredestined to become in time a huge 
vampire, was at first an imitation of the bureaucracy of 
Prussia which raised that country to the highest place among 
the military nations of the world by dint of its conscientious 
service and marvellous organising powers. The difference 
between these two institutions lay less in the designs of their 
founders, or in the form of their organisations, than in the 
nature of their respective materials and of the framework in 
which they were set. It is the difference between the con- 
scientious, plodding, resourceful Prussian, and the easy- 
going a-moral, anarchic Russian. This difference, ever in 
evidence, has been brought into sharp relief since the 
bureaucracy vanished and the masses have had their inn- 
ings. And one can well understand the fierce desire of those 
who lived through the months of terror of 1917, the details 
of which are too horrid to be even hinted at, to bring back 
* A Russian name for the bureaucracy or for one of its grades. 



;\. 



THE TSARDOM 49 

the old system or a derivative in order to recover the Hmited 
tranquilHty which they once enjoyed without appreciating. 

As for the Church, it was a mere museum of liturgical 
antiquities. Vladimir Solovieff used to liken it to a casket 
for an orient pearl whose lustre was dimmed by a thick 
crust of Byzantine dust. Its function in the State was never 
much more than that of a police department for the control 
of the kind of thought that is least open to regulation from 
without — that which speculates on problems of religion. 
The clergy, with the exception of a few self-mortifying 
anchorites and ascetics, were a body of social parasites, poor, 
squalid, grasping, and ignorant, their lives challenging and 
receiving alternate pity and contempt from the benighted 
flock whose shepherds they set up to be. 

From the very outset the Russian Church was the re- 
pository of petrified forms to which a magic virtue was 
ascribed. No life-giving spirit ever animated that rigid 
body, for Byzance was powerless to give what it did not 
possess. How completely the spiritual energies of which 
a church is supposed to be the source were superseded 
by mechanical devices may be gathered from the well- 
attested fact — one of many — that the second Tsar of the 
House of Romanoff, Alexis Mikhailovitch, being a "truly 
religious monarch," was wont to bow down reverently 
before the holy images, his forehead striking the cold stone 
floor one thousand five hundred times every morning. 
Saintly prince ! 

The religion of the Russian people — indulgence towards 
the erring and fellow-feeling for the suffering — has always 
been so much more than the resultant of Christianity that 
I feel disposed to regard it as wholly independent of that 
doctrine. Many years ago I had warm discussions on this 
subject with Count L. Tolstoy, who then held that the 
common Russian at his best was a living illustration of the 
transformation miracle which Christianity, rightly under- 
stood, could work in the rawest ethnic material. LInable 
to endorse this thesis, I got together such cultural vestiges 
of Russia's pre-Christian era as were available, and also 



50 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

certain other data, which in my judgment go to show that 
the Russians* rehgion — Hke that of other peoples — is very 
largely the outcome of that nethermost permanent soul- 
current which is the appanage of race. And I may add that, 
after a series of animated talks, Tolstoy admitted that my 
theory was quite tenable and offers, perhaps, the best 
explanation of all the facts. 

How completely the soul and mind of the people were 
confined in the darkness and bereft of spiritual nutrition, 
especially since Boris Godunoff bound the peasant to the 
glebe, may be illustrated by a few concrete examples. There 
is an anecdote told of how Peter the Great, when in Copen- 
hagen, ordered one of his subjects to throw himself from 
the top of a high tower there just to show his spirit of sub- 
mission. But it is apocryphal. Another story, historically 
vouched for, depicts the great Tsar, whose curiosity knew 
no bounds, as requesting the Elector Frederick III. to give 
him an opportunity of seeing how a man behaved when 
broken on the wheel, and by way of simplifying matters he 
offered one of the members of his own suite for execution. 
The following is also an attested narrative of a scene enacted 
during a review of the recruits in Vilna, shortly before 
Nicholas II. came to the throne. I was in Russia at the 
time. "What is military discipline?" the commanding 
general asked one of the new soldiers. *Tt means, your 
Excellency, that a soldier has got to do exactly what his 
superior officer tells him, only nothing against the Tsar.'* 
"Right, and now let us work it out. Take your cap, bid 
farewell to your comrades, and go and drown yourself in the 
lake there. Look sharp!" Tears glistened in the poor 
fellow's eyes, he gazed prayerfully at his commander, turned 
suddenly right about, made a dash for the lake, and was 
on the very brink when recalled by the sergeant sent to 
prevent the involuntary suicide. 

This blind obedience of the peasant was at the root of the 
military efficiency of the Russian soldier before universal 
service was made obligatory. For dash in battle, endurance 
pf hardships and suffering, and contempt of death that old 



THE TSARDOM 51 

army occupied a foremost place among the forces of the world. 
This transmutation of individual pacifism and fatalism into 
warlike virtues is one of the ironies of circumstance. After 
generations of frightful discipline, the average Russian was 
no longer conscious that he had any claim to justice or pity. 
Taking everything for granted he accounted for his own 
misery by ascribing it to Fate's iron decrees against which 
it would be vain as well as wicked to murmur. "Why," 
writes the famous Saltykoff, "why does our peasant go in 
bast shoes instead of leather boots? Why does such dense 
and widespread ignorance prevail throughout the land? 
Why does the mooshik seldom or never eat meat, butter, or 
even animal fat? How does it come to pass that you rarely 
meet a peasant who knows what a bed is? Why is it that we 
discern in all the movements of the Russian mooshik a 
fatalistic vein, devoid of the impress of conscience? Why, 
in a word, do the peasants come into the world like insects 
and die like summer flies?" ^ And again: "The common 
Russian man not only suffers, but consciousness of his pain 
is singularly blunted, deadened. He looks upon his misery 
as a species of original sin to be borne instead of grappled 
with, as long as his staying powers hold out." ^ He was to 
be pitied in his misery, and is to be redoubted in his eman- 
cipation. Like fire or water, he is a good servant but a bad 
master. 

The story of the emancipation of the serfs, from con- 
ception to realisation, brings to light a number of curious 
illustrations of the temper of the peasants, of their crass 
ignorance and of their absurd opposition to the measures 
taken to relieve their distress. Nicholas I. harboured the 
intention of raising the status of the peasant, tied at that 
time to the glebe, from lx)ndage to relative lil:>erty, and to 
make a beginning with the serfs of the imperial domains. 
But the first obstacle he encountered was raised by the 
serfs themselves. Some eight thousand of the soil-tillers 
whom he was about to set free decided to offer passive 

* Signs of the Times, by M. Saltykoff. 

* Letters about the Provinces, by M. Saltykoff, p. 26a 



7» 



52 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



^ 



opposition to the arrangements. And they withstood their 
imperial emancipator with stoicism. The officer of the 
gendarmes, Stogoff, appeared on the scene with twelve 
gendarmes shouldering loaded guns to bring them to 
reason in approved Russian fashion. 

Stogoff first addressed the peasants, about half of whom 
were Tartars, and asked them whether they would recon- 
sider their decision and knuckle down. "No,'* was the curt 
answer given in unison.^ " 'Well, children, you know that I 
shall have to shoot, congruously with the terms of the law.' 
'Shoot then, little father, the bullet will find the guilty 
ones, as God wills.' 'Now, brethren, listen.' Here I 
doffed my hat, turned devoutly towards the church, made 
the sign of the cross, and exclaimed: 'Like you, brethren, 
I am orthodox. It is never too late to fire. We are all in the 
hands of God. If an innocent man be shot, I shall be called to 
a strict account by God. In order, therefore, to make no 
mistake, I am going to put the question to each of you in 
turn. And he who will not bow to the law will only have 
himself to blame.' 

"I then turned to the first, 'Will you obey the law?' 
'No, I won't.' 'But the Tsar is the anointed of the Lord. 
You are disobeying God.' 'I won't obey.' Thereupon I 
delivered the peasant to a gendarme with the words, 'Well, 
don't blame me now.' The gendarme handed him over to 
another, and so he was passed on till he got to a covered 
courtyard where they filled his mouth with tow, bound his 
hands with straps and his feet with cords, and stretched him 
on the floor. I had the patience to put the same question to 
every peasant, and from every one I received the same 
answer, and each one was duly tied and laid on the floor. 
This procedure lasted until the evening church service. 
The last ten, half of them Mordvins, half Russians, submitted 
and were allowed to go home. That night I neither slept, 
nor ate, nor drank, for in a business of that nature every- 
thing depends on the speed with which you act. 

"When I entered the courtyard, it was filled with the] 
* What follows is related in the words of Stogoff himself. 



THE TSARDOM 53 

mutineers bound hand and foot. 'Rods,' I cried. *Bring 
up the first.* And they produced an old man of seventy. 
'Will you obey?' 'No, I won't.' Tlog him then. . . .' 
The old man raised his head and besought me saying, 
'Order him to deal the strokes quicker.' But it was out 
of my power to help him, because one really could not 
forgive the first man, as everything would then be lost. 
At last, however, the old fellow was dead and I ordered them 
to put the hand-cuffs on the corpse. In this way, after, 
the other thirteen were beaten until they were dead. The 
fourteenth moved forward and exclaimed, 'I submit!' 
'Ah, you scoundrel, why didn't you submit before? If you 
had, then the others would have obeyed who have been 
beaten to death. Here, give him three hundred strokes.' 
That clinched the matter. All those who lay on the ground 
cried out, 'We all submit. Forgive us!' 'To forgive you 
is out of my power for you are guilty in the eyes of God 
and the Tsar.' 'Well, then, punish us, but be merciful.* 

"One should understand the Russian man," adds Stogoff. 
"He is frank, submissive, and calm when punished for a 
fault, but without the punishment his promises are worth- 
less, he waxes restless, waits for what may yet turn up, and 
commits fresh follies. But he who has been chastised is 
afraid to offend again and he calms down. I ordered the 
soldiers to break up into groups and to inflict a hundred 
strokes on each of the mutineers, under the eyes of the 
superintendent, then I called them all together and said, 
'I have done what the law obliged me to do. Only the 
governor can forgive. He can also shut you all up in prison 
and leave you there till you rot.' ^ 'Little father,' they 
cried, 'you are our real father. Intercede for us. Turn 
wrath into mercy as God does.' I made them fall on their 
knees, taught them how to beg for mercy, and promised to 
take their part, but added that the governor was very angry." 
As a matter of fact the governor was in bed, ill from fear. 
Stogoff concerted a little farce with him and afterwards, in 
the presence of the peasants, undertook to vouch for their 
* The time was the year 1838, the place the province of Simbirsk, 



54 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



^ 



future good conduct. He then took his leave and started for 
Petersburg, taking with him the blessings and thanks of the 
peasants ! ^ 

For ages the grip of the ruling caste, even on the souls of 
the people, was everywhere firm except where religious 
fanaticism loosened it. For there were always some millions 
made of the stuff of martyrs who clung to their faith through 
ruthless persecution and cruel torture, even when that faith 
differed from the State creed only in the most trivial details, 
such as making the sign of the cross with two fingers instead 
of three, or repeating Allelujah in the liturgy twice in lieu of 
thrice. And yet, to my recollection, a community of Old 
Believers in Kursk once resolved to display their joy at the 
escape of Alexander III. from an attempt on his life which 
had killed many of his suite ^ by abandoning their own 
religious creed and embracing that which had the honour 
to reckon his Majesty among its members. The number of 
souls who thus risked their salvation for the Tsar was 1 146, 
and they received the thanks of the sovereign for their 
loyalty. It is no exaggeration to say that at times the bulk 
of the orthodox nation were of no stronger fibre than those 
Old Believers who merited the name of "J^^ly"^^"-" 

The material on which the rulers had to work was un- 
commonly tough and intractable, but for a long time their 
endeavours were not altogether fruitless. Even later, if the 
government had taken its role seriously and endeavoured to 
engraft on the people habits of sobriety, thrift, self-help, and 
to promote their welfare within certain broad limits, one 
might wink at some of the practices which had for their 
object the interests of the autocracy at the expense of the 
nation. But the system was immoral, infamous. I witnessed 
its operations at close quarters, having been consecutively 
a student, a university graduate, a doctor, a professor, a 
member of the staff of two journals and the editor of a third. 
When I occupied the chair of Comparative Philology in the 
Ukrainian University of Kharkoff, the central government, 

*Cf. Russian Heads, by Dr. T. Schiemann, 
'At Borki. 



THE TSARDOM 55 

then represented by Count Delyanoff,* an Armenian, 
created the office of moral censors known a-s "beadles," 
whose function was to watch over the morality of the 
students and see that the influence of the professors over them 
was not politically baleful. In truth they were spies and 
fomentors of discord. As they were hated alike by the 
students and by the faculties, I at first disbelieved the 
sinister stories about them which sounded like wild fabrica- 
tions. But a colleague of mine, a scholar of insinuating ways, 
concerted with me to send for the two Catos who had charge 
of the morality of our University of Kharkoff to win their 
confidence and have a friendly chat with them on the sub- 
ject of their past. Having first dealt generously by the needy 
officials, we cross-questioned them in a friendly way, where- 
upon they unburdened their souls freely, in Russian 
fashion. Turning to one of them my colleague asked, 
"What profession did you follow last year, before you were 
appointed beadle?" Unabashed, he made answer, "I was 
fairly well off until my illness. I had a lucrative situation as a 
waiter in the T. dancing tavern where free-and-easy women 
of the town drop in of a night to earn a little cash from the 
loose fellows who have too much of it. And I used to come 
in for a fair share of money and money's worth myself, you 
know. But I got into trouble and . . ." "And you?" 
inquired my friend, nodding to the other beadle. "I was 
a — chucker-out in a brothel in X Street, you know the 
one I mean, it is near Y X Square on the left, you remember? 
I also had an interest in the concern myself, but unluckily it 
went smash owing to a misunderstanding with the police 
and then I lost my daily bread. But God was merciful and 
He sent me this post, blessed be His name." I repeated this 
story later to his Excellency, the Curator of the University, 
with a view to have these two moral mentors appointed to 
situations better adapted to their special qualifications than 

* Minister of Public Institution. An amiable man in social life, but a 
semi-educated snob, who looked upon education as a means of enlisting 
the intelligent classes on the side opposed to the people, and even this 
view he borrowed from Count Dmitry Tolstoy. 



56 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that of educators of the young. But he laughed till he nearly 
fell off the ottoman. "Just the right kind of fellow to drill 
the blackguard students and teach them the way they should 
go/* he said, and the tears rolled down his venerable cheeks. 
In truth the mechanism of government had run down and 
there was no one to wind it up. That was the clue to the 
situation. One does not need to be told how corrosive the 
influence of agents of this kind must have been on the youth 
of the country. Here one finds the line of cleavage between 
the Russian and the Prussian State. 

In those and later days when occupation of some kind had 
to be found for the educated youth of the country, the 
authorities, from the ministers in the capital down to the 
beadles in the provincial universities, encouraged the rising 
generation to expend their superfluous or even vital energy 
in drinking, profligacy, and kindred vice, that being the 
easiest way to stifle the revolutionary impulse. Every species 
of delinquency found forgiveness or connivance barring dis- 
affection to the autocracy. The political dissident critic and 
grumbler were unprincipled mischief-makers for whom no 
punishment was too severe. When after the Crimean war 
the Russian press received relative freedom of political 
opinion it was restricted to foreign politics. Publicists were 
permitted to describe, analyse, and appreciate the forms 
and defects of the government of Naples, Spain, Britain, or 
France, but the Tsardom was a sacred domain into which it 
would have been sacrilege to penetrate. This perpetual 
restriction was one of the sources of the mischievous influ- 
ence which internal questions came at last to have on Russia's 
international relations, which in turn contributed to shape 
the government's home policy. The formula of the latter 
nexus would seem to have been this: every shock and con- 
cussion from without, such as an unsuccessful war, had as its 
inevitable correlate a loosening of the grip of the bureaucracy 
on the nation. And in effect political concessions of various 
kinds and degrees followed almost at once upon each unsuc- 
cessful military expedition, and every pretext was utilised 
that subsequently offered to withdraw or whittle down the 



THE TSARDOM 57 

reforms thus conceded. In this systole and diastole of 
autocracy Russia's history since the beginning of the nine- 
teenth century is epitomised. 

By the time when the struggle between the old spirit and 
the new was growing deadly, the bureaucracy already 
regarded the backwardness of the people as an indispensable 
condition of its own existence. In home affairs, the nation 
was an adjective which had no other use than that of quali- 
fying the substantive which was the State. Hence, econom- 
ically, the Russian people was treated as a wealth-creating 
mechanism whose worth was measurable by the value of its 
labour after taking off the cost of production. From the 
peasantry on whose shoulders rested the weight of Empire 
the authorities extracted everything they could, giving back 
little or nothing in return, and the peasant dealt in a like 
manner with the soil he tilled; putting nothing into it, he 
took out all it could be made to yield. Abhorring intensive 
culture, he thus plundered the land, exhausted its fertility, 
and then clamoured for more. That was one source of the 
outcry for more land, the truth being that, during the second 
half of the reign of Nicholas II., the average amount of land 
possessed by the peasant ought to have sufficed, had it been 
tilled as in Prussia or Belgium. The government for the 
service of its public debt was accustomed to export large 
quantities of corn to its foreign creditors, thus leaving the 
native producer face to face with a food deficit that rendered 
famines periodical as the snows, or rather perennial like the 
Siberian plague. Hunger-stricken peasants thus furnishing 
foreign peoples with abundant and cheap food-stuffs was 
another bit of that irony that so often, in Russia, aggravated 
suffering and intensified resentment. How could the simple- 
minded peasants, accustomed to see such iniquities perpe- 
trated in the names of God and the Tsar, be expected to 
ol)ey divine or human law? Direct taxes were gathered with 
the lash, and indirect contributions to the Treasury ex- 
tracted through the tavern. For the duty of drinking vo<lka 
was sedulously inculcated upon the tillers of the soil, and 
temptation was set before them by guile and by force at the 



58 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



m 



behest or with the connivance of the authorities who 
professed to be bringing them up by hand. "It is a matter 
of surprise," exclaimed a well-known writer, "that a people 
should continue even to exist which is thus ground down on 
all sides and ruined." * And yet minister after minister 
managed to solve the puzzling problem of extracting out 
of these lack-alls the money which they did not possess. 
"These men," wrote another publicist,^ "can scarcely be 
called human beings. They are more like machines for the 
payment of taxes, half -conscious creatures who fancy them- 
selves created for the purpose of working on in hopeless 
toil." Utterances like these remind one of Arthur Young's 
remarks about France on the eve of the great Revolution, and 
the facts they comment upon partly explain how insensible 
Russian peasants proved, on the outbreak of the revolution, 
to the oestrum of moral responsibility. 

For a long while it seemed to the Russians themselves 
that there was no hope of betterment. I remember talking 
the matter over with the zealous Archbishop of Kherson and 
Odessa, Nikanor, many years ago. He shook his head 
mournfully and reminded me of what he had said publicly 
on a very solemn occasion a few weeks before : "Altogether 
the state of things in Russia is superlatively sad. The 
people's minds are terribly dark and there is no sign of the 
coming dawn." Mental darkness and moral obliquity were 
the postulates of the Tsarist State. Remove them and the 
fabric was bound to fall. In an article which I wrote in the 
reign of Alexander III. on the obscurantist policy of Pobie- 
donostseff, I put forward the view which subsequent events 
have borne out, that that statesman took the most efficacious 
means to achieve his end. 

In spite of the listlessness and resignation of the peasantry, 
their land hunger gradually placed them in opposition to 
the State whose greed of agricultural produce made its rule 
arbitrary and ruthless. But the authorities shifted the odium 
from themselves to the land owners. The masses hung their 

^The Messenger of Europe, pp. 781-782, October, 1890. 
'In The Messenger of Europe, 1890. 



THE TSARDOM 59 

faith and their resignation on the fiction which they firmly 
believed that the Tsar was desirous of bestowing all the 
land on them, but was temporarily thwarted, partly by male- 
ficent officials and very largely by the landed proprietors. 
Against these an angry feeling was engendered among the 
Tsar-fearing people, which, on occasion, spurted up in the 
form of riots and necessitated occasional sops in the shape 
of shadowy reform measures. 

But in the long run the demoralising influence of a system 
of governance which took no thought of the people's interest 
was sure to produce its own antidote. It first provoked a 
number of partial explosions which the bureaucracy refused 
to construe as warnings, and then produced the volcanic out- 
burst of fire and flame and liquid lava which has reduced the 
state organism to a heap of ghastly ruins. Out of these it is 
now hoped that the nation will arise one day radiant and 
with strength of wing for a long and lofty flight. 

The catastrophe would have occurred last century had it 
not been for the circumstance that the Russian people 
remained moveless and cataleptic in their mediaeval groove 
in consequence of their isolation from western Europe. 
Although they received from abroad most of what they 
prized and had nothing cultural to offer in return, they were 
long beyond the reach of the fertilising currents that flowed 
through the continent from the French side of the Pyrenees 
to the mountains of Transylvania and even to the basin of 
the Vistula and the plains of Poland. The Byzantine Church, 
with no international centre, cut off from communion with 
other Christian denominations and devoid of its own springs 
of learning and culture, bulked large as a barrier between 
East and West and kneaded its adepts until they Wame 
amenable to the stupefying sedative of numbing doctrines. 
Everything that tended to break down that barrier, to burst 
the dam and let the stream of western culture into the 
Tsardom, was welcomed by the intelligentsia and repressed 
by the authorities as a force on the side of the people against 
the prevailing system of masked servitude. One of the 
oldest and most elusive of these was religious sectarianism. 



60 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

In time these forces waxed numerous and formidable. The 
introduction of foreign capital into the Empire by Count 
Witte and together with it of western conceptions of living 
and working incompatible with the traditional ordering of 
the community; the spread of industries; the formation 
of a floating class of workers who spent the winter in 
factories and the remainder of the year on the land, a new 
body of skilled artisans wholly cut off from the land, freed 
from the fetters that hampered the peasant and initiated 
into the system of organised self-help by co-operation and 
self-defence by strikes — generated new material conditions 
to which the others tended to conform. The progress of 
education, technical and general, and the influence of litera- 
ture and journalism which flashed powerful searchlights on 
revolting episodes of the people's life, radiated new ideas 
about the relations between rulers and subjects, employers 
and labourers, and filled men with resentment against the 
class that had theretofore governed the Empire. Further, 
the religious spirit, quickened with a solvent critical quality, 
gave rise to new sects of a rationalistic and therefore icono- 
clastic character that sapped the awe which the man of the 
people had long entertained of his masters, and loosened 
the conception of authority generally to a degree unimagined 
in the West. Military service, too, which abounded in 
splendid opportunities for revolutionary propaganda, fur- 
nished a suitable body for the new spirit of rebellion that 
was gradually taking possession of the generation contem- 
porary with Nicholas II. 



CHAPTER V 
Some Personal Recollections 

When I first went to Russia the Liberal movement that 
had been making headway ever since the death of Nicholas I. 
was in full swing, and in spite of such set-backs as the 
reaction caused by the abortive attempt on the life of 
Alexander 11. was perceptibly nearing a climax. I came in 
contact with many of the eminent men of that epoch, and 
also with the type of Nihilist described by Turghenieff.^ 
Tn the course of those years I also had ample opportunities 
:o study the Russian character in various types and in 
various social layers, and despite its defects, some of which 
are repellent, I felt drawn towards it irresistibly. The charm 
it sometimes possesses is hardly definable and yet at its 
best is positively captivating. Some Russians — Vladimir 
Solovieff was an instance — carry with them a mystical and 
subtle atmosphere of the marvellous, which throws work-a- 
day concerns wholly out of the perspective, seems to melt 
solid obstacles, to shrivel up space, do away with time, and 
imbue one with the airy spirit of a thaumaturge. And yet 
the very essence of the spell is unaffected simplicity. 

One of the first phenomena that pressed its unfamiliarity 
upon my attention was the privileged status of educated 
women and the sterling qualities by which some of them 
justified and maintained it. Their minds were worthy of 

* Ry way of preparation I had studied Slav languages at the University 
of Innsbruck, and afterwards under Leskicn at the University of Leipzig, 
and the first period of my sojourn in Russia was spent on the Steppes of 
the Ukraine where I acquired the language of tlic province. Since then I 
lived and worked for years in close contact with the Liberal movement 
under tiiree Tsars, and in various capacities as a student, as a graduate 
of two Russian Faculties and Universities, as Professor of Comparative 
Philology at the University of Kharkoff, as the author of several literary 
and scientific works, as leader-writer of two Russian newspapers and 
editor of one, as representative of the Daily Tch-firaf^h. and advisi-r to my 
eminent friend Count Witte. 

6i 



62 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

their hearts, the true sources of that natural reHgion of 
sympathy and pity which seldom fails to captivate the 
foreigner. Another peculiarity that arrested my attention 
was the political division of the population into classes and 
castes, among which by far the worst off were the peasants 
and the Jews. In the province of Kieff I was favourably 
situated to study at close quarters the disabilities of both. 

One of the phenomena that struck me most forcibly as 
characteristic of the political regime was the sharp division 
between the classes and the masses or, as the two were then 
termed, between society — meaning the thinking and writing 
sections — and the people. My first impression was that of 
a conquered race and its foreign masters, the latter living 
upon the substance of the former and giving little or nothing 
in return. This impression was deepened by what I learned 
of the role of the bureaucracy which soon appeared as what 
it really was — ^parasitic. A petty official was in some respects 
a tsarlet. He could achieve certain difficult feats that were 
beyond the power of the Emperor, and was often able to 
shield the guilty, condemn the innocent, perpetuate crying 
abuses, and ignore the commands of the Tsar. All these 
impressions were the results of experiences at various times 
and places. 

One of my first experiences illustrated the hapless lot of 
the peasantry in one of the southern provinces where they 
were much better off than in the north. The incident 
happened near the village of Nabutoff, in the province of 
Kieff, many miles from a town. One Sunday afternoon I was 
wandering alone in the steppe, resting between whiles and 
dipping into a book, when I became aware all at once that a 
group of half-sober peasants were at my heels. They yelled 
out menacingly, called me a Turkish spy, and ordered me 
to halt. Instead of complying, however, I moved rapidly 
towards the river that separated me from the distant manor 
in which I resided, but finding no boat to carry me across 
I surrendered to the peasants whose numbers had grown 
considerably and whose hostility was no longer masked. 
They charged me with being a Turkish spy, and some of 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 63 

them wanted to drown or hang me without further parley. 
And I believe they would have done it on the spot but for 
the warning of one individual who affirmed that he had seen 
me before, knew I was English, and that none of them would 
escape severe punishment if they harmed me. They then 
emptied my pockets, abstracted all the money I had — some 
fifty roubles — and with great reluctance allowed me to send 
a messenger to the owner of the house where I was staying. 
After a couple of hours I was finally released, but the 
peasants had spent my money and were unable or unwilling 
to refund it. Two days later the village elder paid me a 
visit, offered his excuses, and informed me that three of the 
villagers had been soundly flogged by his orders and in his 
presence, and he wished to know whether I should like any 
more of them subjected to the same punishment. If so, he 
would fix the time to suit my convenience so that I could 
watch the execution if I desired. I expostulated with him, 
told him that I disapproved of flogging, and discoursed to 
him on human dignity, but he only remarked that a mooshik 
who has never been flogged is good for nothing. 

In the following year I was at the University of St. Peters- 
burg studying Oriental languages and I had the good fortune 
to meet prominent men of all classes and parties, including 
the novelists Dostoyeffsky, Gontshareff, and Leskoff.^ One 
afternoon, in the interval between two sections of one of the 
fashionable open-air concerts that were daily given at Pav- 
loffsk, near Tsarskoye Selo, at which several grand dukes 
and many court dignitaries and ministers were present, I 
was in a group the centre of which was the Minister of the 
Interior,^ when an acquaintance of mine. Count A., came 
up, took the minister aside, and in my presence complained 
of the intractable disposition of his nephew, to whom I had 
given tuition. 'The long and short of it is," he concluded, 

* Others were Russia's only philosopher. Vladimir Solovieff. who after- 
wards became a close friend of mine; Katkoff, the greatest journalist 
Russia ever had, the editor of the principal Moscow daily paper; and 
Hilbassoff, editor of the Petersburg Goloss. 

* 'J'imasheff. 



64 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

"that he is a scapegrace and bids fair to become a criminal, 
and I can do nothing with him. He borrows money from 
the servants, spends it in houses of ill repute, drinks, gambles, 
and is not amenable to reason, and I want you to help me." 

"With pleasure," the minister replied. "Only tell me in 
what form you wish for help. I can shut your nephew up if 
that would meet your wishes, but I suppose you would draw 
the line at incarceration. If so, I can bundle him off to 
Siberia, or Archangel, or the Caucasus, or Central Asia." 

"Central Asia! That's it. Send him there. But how 
will he live?" 

"Oh, ril put him into the army in Tashkent and his 
superior officer will do the rest. He will certainly strike the 
fear of God into his soul and see that his body is fed and 
clad, I answer for that. The day after to-morrow then at 
nine in the morning a gendarme will fetch him, and you 
need worry no more." 

The uncle uttered his thanks and the conversation took 
another turn. Two days later the prodigal youth was duly 
transferred to Tashkent and I never had tidings of him 
again. I referred to the subject later on, when I had come 
to know the minister better, and I asked him whether the 
law really invested him with the power he had invoked. 
He replied in the affirmative, quoted a clause of the statute, 
and remarked that what with the code of laws and the vast 
discretionary powers conferred on ministers to deal with 
persons administratively, the liberty of the subject was no 
better guaranteed in Russia than in France of Louis XIV. 
when lettres de cachet opened the Bastille to so many 
members of the aristocracy. He added that neither he nor, 
so far as he knew, his colleagues would employ that power 
without first satisfying their consciences that they were not 
the instruments of personal hatred or injustice. 

I have little doubt that M. Timasheff was a conscientious 
official in the Russian sense of the word, as was also the 
Minister of Justice, Count Pahlen, who had recently re-Bj 
signed. But none the less the system which they repre- 
sented was weighing heavily on the nation. Cases of crying 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 65 

injustice perpetrated by provincial organs of the central 
government occasionally came to my knowledge. At the 
university espionage and its by-products were occasional 
phenomena. It is fair to say, however, that I always found 
those ministers to whom I had access ready to listen to any 
appeal on behalf of victims if grounded on fact. Once when 
the "Liberals," as the revolutionary students were then 
euphemistically termed, were hard pressed by the police 
most members of the group with which I often mixed were 
arrested one after the other. My card having been found 
on one of the accused, he was plied with questions as to my 
opinions and actions, and I was cautioned by my friends to 
make ready to be arrested. But it was the unexpected that 
happened. One morning professors and students were 
thunderstruck to learn that one of the most promising 
students of the university had disappeared, nobody knew 
how. Alexeyenko — that was his name — had never been sus- 
pected by any of us. Apparently, and so far as we knew, his 
was the scholar's temper of mind rather than the revolu- 
tionary's unmeasured zeal for the welfare of his fellows. He 
had been regular in his attendance at the mathematical 
faculty and successful in his special studies there. He was 
in his fourth and last year and his professors were proud of 
him. Yet he was spirited away so mysteriously that some 
days elapsed before we learned that he had been kidnapped 
by the police in the street when returning home after mid- 
night. As it was known that I was personally acquainted 
with the Minister of the Interior I was asked by a colleague 
and friend, who has since become one of the pillars of the 
autocracy, to appeal to him for the release of the prisoner, and 
I accepted the mission. On this occasion, however, I failed 
to see Timasheff himself, but I gave the message to his 
brother-in-law, who shortly afterwards brought me this 
answer: "The minister has no knowledge of the arrest. 
Give him details, and if Alexeyenko \xt as innocent as you 
maintain he shall be restored to his home and his studies.*' 
The students to whom I communicated these tidings were 
delighted. A few days later came another message from 



G6 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Timasheff exhorting me to pursue the matter and let him 
know the result. The idea that an all-powerful minister 
should apply to a mere student for information about official 
acts amused me. But the prisoner could not be traced. At 
last a smuggled missive reached one of his university friends 
to the effect that he had been conveyed from gaol to gaol 
and was in the prison of X in western Siberia at the time 
of writing. I communicated this information to the minister 
who certainly fulfilled his promise and opened an inquiry 
into the facts, but with what result I never learned. Nor 
did I ever hear of Alexeyenko any more. 

Although at first things in the Tsardom attracted my 
attention less in proportion to their specific weight than to 
the freshness of the impressions they produced, I felt at 
every hand's turn the consequence of Russia's long inacces- 
sibility to western influences, and was struck with the 
complete cultural separation of class from class in the 
Empire. As for the lower orders their entire mental structure 
seemed different from that of the "intellectuals." At that 
time the merchants formed almost a close corporation of 
their own with hallowed traditions, recognised customs, 
class jealousy, and even a remarkable literary exponent in 
the person of the playwright Ostroffsky, who has left a 
complete and realistic picture of their every-day life then on 
the eve of its transformation. The secular clergy, too, were 
still a caste, their very language being tinged with medise- 
valism, and their principal sources of training were eccle- 
siastical schools and seminaries where instruction was 
superficial and theological. But the most isolated and 
peculiar of all were the peasants. So long as they were 
serfs they had the landlord's advice, which was a benefit 
when he was enlightened and well disposed, but after their 
emancipation the villages were proclaimed independent and 
"self-governing" and closed to all outside influences. 
Thenceforth only a peasant might vote in the village 
assembly. Representatives of the upper and better informed 
classes, like the squire, the parish priest, the doctor, even 
though they had resided for years in the village, were not 



m 




PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 67 

entitled to take hand or part in arranging its affairs. Their 
moral influence was rigorously excluded, and the ignorant 
soil-tillers became the wards and the prey of their own more 
cunning and unscrupulous members, who embezzled and 
cheated and committed every kind of enormity unchecked. 
For the Mir in those days had the power to deport any of 
its members to Siberia without giving him the benefit of 
trial or alleging any legal charge against him, and a clever 
Machiavellian elder had but to supply his fellow-villagers 
with copious draughts of vodka to get them to pronounce 
any decree within their competence. This type of man was 
commonly termed a Koolak, or fist, to symbolise his utter 
callousness to pity and ruth. And of all the human monsters 
I have met in my travels I cannot recall any so malignant 
and odious as the Russian Koolak. In the revolutionary 
horrors of 1905 and 19 17 he was the ruling spirit — a fiend 
incarnate. 

At the university I found myself in contact with apostles 
of revolution who talked as though society were a mass of 
clay capable of being fashioned at will by the social potter. 
History they despised without knowing, and the theory of 
evolution they treated as a disembodied fancy of the pseudo- 
scientific brain. Crass ignorance, ingrained prejudice, and 
inability to face adverse facts were characteristics of the 
leaders of the movement at the university. I remember one 
in particular who frankly admitted that he never opened a 
hook nor attended a lecture, but simply lived for and on the 
coming revolution. This typical youth, who had entered the 
university from an ecclesiastical seminary, had no fixed 
abode, nearly always carried with him forbidden leaflets, 
proclamations, and newspapers hidden inside his scanty 
clothing, yet he had the good fortune to be always arrested 
when he chanced to have none of these compromising 
evidences on his person. From time to time we met to 
discuss general principles — I was not a member of the inner 
circle — to formulate the ideals of the nation, and analyse the 
means proposed for attaining them. Letters were then read 
from ardent spirits who had devoted their lives to the people, 



68 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

were living among them in isolation and hardship, and 
fancied that they could fathom the ideas and divine the 
real sentiments of the peasant. Several of these men, who 
were always accompanied and keyed up by resolute, selfless, 
and enthusiastic young women, were pale reflections of 
Turghenieff's Rudin, but more than one yielded to tempta- 
tion, turned against their comrades, and delivered them up 
to the authorities. Many settled down in time and became 
respected bureaucrats. Naturally I admired the ardour and 
self-denial of the few, the champions of a popular cause, who 
stirred in men and women a sense of the vast potentialities 
of their nation and the human race, and for a time I accepted 
their definition of Russia's aims as correct. 

But it gradually dawned on me, and also on my close 
friend, the future pillar of Panslavism and autocracy, that 
whatever one might think about the social and political 
theories of the revolutionaries, they were uniformly wrong 
in their facts and forecasts. Thus their anticipation of the 
peasants' attitude towards the government were invariably 
belied by events. Tshemyshevsky, for example, whose 
writing we secretly read and warmly discussed, had staked 
his reputation and also the fate of his scheme on the postulate 
that the peasants would not accept their emancipation as 
offered by Alexander II., but would rise in arms and over- 
throw the government. He next believed that their calm 
resignation was but temporary, and that within two years' 
time the long hoped for rebellion would convulse the Empire. 
All the expectations and most of the assumptions of Bakunin 
and Herzen had also vanished at the touch of reality, and the 
Russian peasantry remained the impenetrable Sphinx it had 
been before. Nobody then nor, indeed, for forty years longer 
could put into words the ideals of the people — and had they 
divined them, no apostle, no idealist, could have utilised 
them for the purpose of arousing enthusiasm and generating 
the motive power for a revolution. The groundwork of the 
peasants' own scheme for his well-being is formed by what 
diplomatists would terni ''healthy robust egotism," and his 
cherished method is expropriation. The picture which was 



I 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 69 

commonly drawn of the tiller of the soil by the "intel- 
lectuals" was the projection of a poetic brain, a synthesis 
of the qualities adequate for the founders of a latter-day 
Utopia. In a word, the so-called leaders of the nation had 
not the remotest conception of the nation's world-philosophy, 
instincts, or strivings. 

Looking back at their words and acts I can affirm that 
they created an imaginary nation after their own heart, and 
worked by fits and snatches and with unsuitable weapons 
for the welfare of that. And from that day to this the chasm 
between the two has never been bridged. 

The abortive revolution of 1905-6, the failure of the con- 
stitutional parties to hammer in the adamantine wedge 
which the defeat of the bureaucracy by the Japanese had 
inserted into the State framework, and finally the Kadets' ^ 
ignorance of the movement that culminated in the outburst 
of March, 191 7, their helplessness in face of a set of circum- 
stances which, rightly handled, would have kept the Empire 
for a time intact and placed its social and political ordering 
in their own hands, but, botched as it was, opened the 
sluice gates to the floods of anarchy — are all object lessons 
on the difficulty of interpreting aright the spiritual and 
material needs and longings of the Russian people. These 
requirements and strivings are, to my thinking, largely 
conditioned by the historical factors already enumerated, 
and in especial by the numbing influence of ages of cultural 
isolation. There is a thick substratum of primeval savagery 
in the peasant's composition not at all far from the surface 
which separates him widely, not only from western peoples, 
but also from the intellectuals of his own race as they appear 
in their public words and acts. The revolting behaviour of 
the soldiery and the peasantry to their own kith and kin 
(luring the nation's diiirittjii tremens after March, 19 17, which 
even revolutionary history is too prude to record, offers 
irrefragable evidence of the deplorable fact that the bulk 
of the Russian people is still in that primitive stage when 

*The "Kadets" arc the Constitutional Democrats presided over by M. 
Milyukoff. The name arose from the initial letters of the two words — K. O. 



70 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



1 

is I 



self-government, even in the diluted form in which it 
vouchsafed to some continental nations, would harm in lieu 
of helping it. Education and careful training will in time 
qualify the people for an ever larger share in the conduct of 
its affairs, but in the meanwhile its spokesmen and trustees 
are tearing the political organism into shreds. Under a wise 
and strong government the peasants become as clay in the 
potter*s hands — plasticity being one of the racial traits 
common to them with all their race. But take away the 
compelling force and they become human frenzies. The 
Northern Slav is an amalgam of contradictions: he can put 
forth stupendous efforts for a short while, but is incapable 
of sustaining a moderate endeavour per sever ingly until the 
object is achieved. 

Some of the types of the rising generation with whom I 
was thrown into contact at the university would have 
exercised the ingenuity of the most experienced psycho- 
logist and tempted a literary portraitist like Balzac. The 
procession of them that passed before my eyes kept my 
mind constantly in an active mood ever seeking for labels 
and sometimes finding none that were applicable. I re- 
member in particular the following incident characteristic 
of much. I had asked a professor to read the book of Genesis 
with me in Hebrew and to give me the benefit of his special 
knowledge of that subject. He agreed to do this, provided 
that I found three other students willing to join me, and 
that he might deliver the lectures every Monday morning 
at nine in his own private dwelling. The hour was 
repellent to many, considering that we were then in the 
height of the winter season, but I contrived to persuade two 
students to join the class. To get a third, however, seemed 
impossible. At last I besought one of our comrades, a fine, 
tall, well-built youth who was studying Chinese and Mongol 
and, unlike so many others, was well-to-do, content with the 
world, and shy of politics. But when he learned the hour of 
the lecture and the place — which was very remote from the 
street in which his own rooms were situate — he refused 
categorically to join the class. And all my suasion was in 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 71 

vain. Somehow I mentioned casually it would be only once 
a week, every Monday morning, and he at once exclaimed, 
"Oh, Monday morning? Yes, of course, I can come. 
Nothing easier. You see every Sunday I spend the night 
in a house of — of — amusement a stone's throw from the 
professor's place, and I get up about eight or half-past eight, 
so that I can be at his rooms by nine without an effort. I 
will oblige you." Accordingly he too came — straight from 
his dissipation — and we had our lecture on Genesis. One 
day he was late and the professor, in consequence of some 
jocular allusion of ours, the point of which he missed, put 
a plain question and wormed the secret out of us, and on 
learning the motives that had determined his fourth student 
to frequent his lectures on Genesis he laughed heartily. 

The oriental faculty was the least political section of the 
university. Its students held aloof from revolutionary 
meetings, and either worked very hard or enjoyed life to the 
top of their bent. Our friend of the Monday morning 
lectures having burned the candle at both ends and also 
in the middle, melted away rapidly and was buried within a 
twelvemonth. 

With the bureaucracy and its workings I became ac- 
quainted under the guidance of a few of its gifted members, 
one, the celebrated Tertius Philippoff, imperial comptroller, 
who took me into his department, gave me a post there, and 
initiated me into the psychology of the tshinovnik ; another, 
Basil Grigorieff, Professor of Oriental Languages and 
Director-General of the Censor's Department ; and a less 
exalted but more highly endowed censor, who had fought 
in the Crimea and was one of the most gifted, typical, 
devil-may-care, captivating Russians, and one of the most 
plausible Nihilists I ever met. S. K. had witnessed the utter 
breakdown of the bureaucratic war machine under Nicholas I. 
and had contemplated the misery it inflicted on the soldiers 
whose heroism, unrc(iuitcd and unrewarded, was un- 
paralleled. He had observed the progress of revolutionary 
propaganda in the army, among Russian soldiers, in Bul- 
garia and in Warsaw; and in his capacity of censor lie was 



72 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

continually reading revolutionary leaflets, manifestos, news- 
papers, and books, and discussing them with hardly veiled 
sympathies. He supplied me with the forbidden works of 
Dobroliuboff, Tshernyshevsky, Herzen, and others, and 
gradually filled me with pity for the victims of the auto- 
cratic Juggernaut and with loathing for the idol and its 
priests. In speculative matters there were no bounds to 
S. K.'s enterprise: he would call in question the holiest 
institutions, attack the root dogmas of Christianity, or the 
morality of remaining alive in this world of misery and 
squalor, but he discharged the duties of censor efficiently and 
with a breadth of view in which his colleagues were lacking, 
and always congruously with the letter of the law. He was 
at once a most successful apostle of Nihilism and one of the 
most efficient servants of the State. 

In those days I used frequently to visit the palace of 
Tsarskoye Selo, accompanied by a member of a family which, 
at that time, was living on terms of close friendship with 
that of the heir apparent, afterwards Alexander III. The 
Tsarevitch and his consort called occasionally at the villa 
where the head of the family resides, and it was there that 
I first saw and spoke to him. When S. K. heard of my visits 
to the palace he exclaimed, "Look well at the children of 
the Tsarevitch Alexander Alexandrovitch. None of them 
will ever reach the throne. Mark my words. I think I know 
my country.*' I noted his prophecy which was not fulfilled, 
but it came very near to the mark. I watched the children 
of the Tsarevitch and speculated in my mind on their future. 
In particular I made inquiries respecting the character and 
mental outfit of him who I afterwards saw crowned as 
Nicholas II. As it happened I was present at every great 
event in his life down to a short time before the outbreak 
of the war. 

Echoes from the subterranean forge where seismic 
explosions were being prepared reached us periodically in 
the halls of the university, and more than once I arranged 
for a private meeting (skhodka) to be held in the auditory 
of the oriental faculty which, being somewhat distant from 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 73 

the principal lecture rooms, was not likely to be invaded by 
the authorities. We there listened to wordy debates about 
the duty of patriots to forego their individual life-schemes, 
settle down among the peasants and working men, and dis- 
charge the function of leaven to raise them to the revolu- 
tionary pitch ;^ about the relative merits of a social and a 
political upheaval; about the separation of the working 
man from the intellectuals; and about the part which 
terrorism should be made to play in the coming purification of 
the Russian world. My friend the student B. and I never 
actually joined any secret society, but we listened to the 
general discussions with something more than mere interest, 
and we never hesitated between a political change and the 
social debacle preached by the uncompromising pioneers 
who quoted Bakunin. S. K. on the other hand, ever uncom- 
promising in theory, favoured Bakunin's programme, and 
often quoted these words of the master, "Let us put our 
faith in the eternal spirit which pulls down and annihilates 
only because he is the inscrutable and creative source of all 
life. The desire to destroy is at the same time a creative 
desire." Among an extreme section of the party known as 
"The People's Will" this doctrine was assimilated and 
when possible practised with deep-reaching consequences. 
The seed sown in those days produced the fruits we beheld 
in 1905-6 and in 191 7. 

The first attempt at terrorism that took place while I was 
in the country was made by Vera Zassulitch who, belonging 
to no party, travelled on her own initiative all the way from 
the Volga to the capital, fired at the Prefect of St. Petersburg, 
General Trepoflf, and severely wounded him because, accord- 

*This injunction was religiously carried out by a number of ardent spirits 
of both sexes who grudged no eflfort, shrank from no sacrifices to reach 
the hearts and brains of the lower classes. Sophia Perovskaya went 
among the working women of the capital, subsequently joined the terror- 
ists, and fmally was hanged for the murder of Alexander II. I looked 
upon her face as she was being taken to the place of execution. Officers 
like Shishka abandoned the army and became factory hands. Altogether no 
fewer than three thousand apostles thus went among their own and their 
own received them not. The peasants and the workers looked with con- 
temptuous wonder upon these political missionaries. 



74 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

ing to statements published in the daily paper, he had had 
a political prisoner flogged. This audacious deed sent a 
thrill of satisfaction over the entire nation. The girl was 
tried for the offence before a jury and acquitted, whereupon | 
excitement rose to white heat. The authorities ordered her 
immediate re-arrest, but she was nowhere to be found. The j 
Minister of Justice, a conscientious German, Count Pahlen J| 
had to resign. The police arrested crowds of people, many 
were deported to Siberia without trial, and terror from— 
on high begot terror from below. I well remember theBI 
August day when Stepniak stabbed Mezentseff in St. 
Petersburg, and the flushed cheeks and flaming eyes of S. K. 
who hastened to me with all the particulars at his fingers' 
ends and assured me that this was but the overture. In 
effect the Tsar himself was the next target of the terrorists 
and a student his would-be assassin. Five shots from a 
revolver were fired at the Emperor from a moderate distance, 
but Alexander's hour had not struck. The attempt was not 
unforeseen. The revolutionists had formally condemned 
the monarch to death, apprised him of the sentence, and 
added that his only hope of escape was to bestow constitu- 
tional government on the country. This move bespoke a 
change of programme. Instead of social, political renovation 
was now demanded. The terrorists who had been there- 
tofore working exclusively for a social burst-up won the 
support, by accepting the aims, of the Liberals who 
clamoured for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. 
The Liberals testified their reconciliation by a bootless 
effort to induce the government to commute the death 
sentence on the would-be assassin of the Tsar into banish- 
ment to Siberia. 

For victory in the struggle that now ensued the secret 
police of the 'Third Section" relied on its spies, agents 
provocateurs, and its power to punish the discontented 
administratively. But the conspirators were dauntless and 
resourceful in their schemes against the monarch's life, 
which, although baulked continually, were resumed with 
unflagging ardour. Time after time a chance discovery, a 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 75 

precaution neglected, a trick of fate saved the Emperor — 
some unforeseen accident always — who had been en- 
couraged to believe that the danger he ran was only apparent. 
But when one evening the apartment under his dining-room 
in the Winter Palace was blown to splinters at the moment 
when he would have been sitting at table had he not been 
delayed unexpectedly, he awoke to the conviction that the 
only way to ensure his safety and escape his enemies was to 
look into their demands and see how far he could prudently 
go towards satisfying them. This conclusion marked a 
turning point in his policy. He promoted the Governor- 
General of Kharkoff, Loris Melikoff, to be president of a 
committee to carry on the home government, invested him 
with almost dictatorial powers, and ordered him to elaborate 
a project of far-ranging reform. Unfortunately this good 
resolution was unknown to the terrorists, who fancied that 
the external change meant but greater intensity in coercion. 

Loris Melikoff was well intentioned and fairly well in- 
formed, but the revolutionary party knew of no reason why 
it should trust him. An early and hasty attempt was even 
made on his life. I, who was living on a footing of cordial 
friendship with the leading Armenians of St. Petersburg, 
with Delyanoff, the Esoffs, Patkanoff, etc., etc., learned a 
good deal of what was going on behind walls and doors. 
From the utterances of Professor Gradoffsky on the other 
hand, who was spoken of as Melikoff 's secretary, I could 
gauge the suspicions of the Liberal party, and by S. K. 
I was apprised in a general way that a wide web was believed 
to be woven by the terrorists round the Tsar, in the meshes 
of which he would probably be caught. 

Melikoff's conception was businesslike and his way of 
executing it tactful. On the one hand he was loth to scare 
the Emperor by a far-reaching project sprung upon him 
without warning, and on the other hand neither the gist nor 
the details of his moderate scheme must be allowed to leak 
out prematurely lest the reactionary press, headed by the 
redoubted Katkoff, should organise a national opposition. 
What the virtual dictator had in view was to increase the 



76 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

powers of the zemstvos, to authorise them to co-operate 
with each other throughout the Empire, and thus to enablel 
them to create an intelHgent representative assembly. That 
seemed to outsiders who were free from bias to be the right 
step at that conjuncture. I confess that my own mind wa9«j 
not quite made up at the time, partly because I was not sure 
of the data, and partly because I was a reader of the writings 
of Katkoff whom I knew personally. I also enjoyed the«] 
advantage of listening occasionally to Dostoyeffsky's diatribes 
and perusing his dull periodical, and S. K. was never tired 
of telling me that nothing must be expected from the crown 
except decrees of banishment to Siberia, nor from the 
revolutionists barring the martyrdom of some and the 
treachery of others. One thing alone was clear to me: a 
social upheaval would endanger the very existence of the 
Empire. The utmost that the cultural level of the nation 
would admit of was a moderate political change. 

In the meantime, the two enemies went their respective 
ways, the terrorists plotting the death of the Tsar, and the 
Tsar making up his mind to yield what the terrorists had 
demanded, and even to contemplate its corollary, a genuine 
parliament. At last Loris Melikoff completed his project 
and secured the Emperor's assent to it about the same time 
that the conspirators had put the final touch to theirs. On 
Saturday, 12th March, 1881, I was sauntering down the 
Nevsky Prospekt with my Professor of Armenian, Patkanian, 
and we were about to cross the Morskaya, a street leading 
to the palace, when the police suddenly stopped us in order 
to let the imperial sleigh glide past. At close quarters we 
saluted Alexander 11. Mechanically he returned the greet- 
ing, looking pensive and weary as he glided shadow-like 
from before our eyes. 'T should feel sorry to be in that 
man's shoes to-day," whispered Professor Patkanian to me, 
as we moved out of ear-range of the police. "Why to-day?" 
I asked. "Don't you know," he replied, "that Loris 
Melikoff is very anxious about the Tsar's safety? They have 
discovered another plot, this time a formidable affair, and 
have arrested the principal conspirators. But the others are 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 77 

still at large, and may yet carry out their scheme unless Loris 
baffles it. He is all the more worried about it that the 
Emperor refuses to submit to rational measures of pre- 
caution. He has besought him to stay indoors for a few days, 
but the Tsar is reckless. Loris is worried.'* 

The next day I was in the mined house ^ which would 
have been blown to smithereens had the Tsar, who had 
just signed and sanctioned the desired reform, driven down 
the Nevsky. But instead he went along the Moika. I reached 
the fatal spot a few minutes after the bombs had exploded, 
the victims had fallen, and the dying Tsar had been taken 
to the Winter Palace. I saw the blood on the snow and 
crowds of old women dipping handkerchiefs or clothes in it 
and reverently making the sign of the cross. I stood in front 
of the palace an hour or two later in the midst of a dense 
throng waiting for the monarch to show himself, for he was 
believed to have escaped intact or with a slight wound. And 
I then had another opportunity to observe the peasant's true 
character as it revealed itself when temporarily freed from 
outside restraint. As I stood that memorable afternoon 
among the crowd in the snow, my eyes fixed on the balcony 
from which the monarch was wont on exceptional occasions 
to greet or address the people, there were two students near 
me who were talking in a tone that denoted indifference, 
callousness, or satisfaction. Now and again they broke into 
a laugh. I could not hear anything they were saying, but I 
noticed that the one nearest to me was particularly light- 
hearted and blithe. All at once I heard the rasping tones of 
a dvornik's^ voice shouting, **What do you mean?" 
followed by the sulxlued response of one of the students, 
then a chorus of angry voices waxing louder and louder 
around the pair. A violent push past me where the students 
stood, a hustling movement, some cynical ejaculations, and 

* In the same house there was a joint^stock concern of which Patkanian 
was a director, and I had an appointment there with him at the very hour 
when the whole place was to have been blown up had the Tsar returned 
that way. 

■ A dvornik, literally the "gate keeper," is one of several house janitors 
whose duties were to carry fuel to the flats, take thq passports to the 
police, watch at the gates all night, and spy on the inmates of the house. 



78 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

then a sequence of awful screams that froze one's blood 
were the only sights and sounds that reached me of the 
revolting tragedy that had been enacted almost by my side. 
The two students had been seized first by the ears which 
were pulled away, and then torn limb from limb. Sick at 
heart I returned home to learn that a blood bath was appre- 
hended, as the dvorniks and other peasants had announced 
their intention of killing every well-dressed person in the 
capital. That was my first insight into what is connoted by 
the elemental ferocity of the people. I began to understand 
how essential are outward restraints to good, nay, to human 
behaviour in those benighted masses. Neither the doctrines 
of Christ nor the instincts of humanity had been cultivated 
by their leaders. The people had for ages seen robbery, 
murder, in a word all kinds of crime, political, private, and 
absolutely wanton outrages perpetrated in the name of God, 
the Tsar, and the fatherland by their own educated and 
spiritual guides. Is it to be wondered at that whenever they 
had the chance in turn to rob and burn and torture and kill 
they used it to the full relentlessly ? 

As soon as the Emperor's death became known, Peters- 
burg fell into a state of chaotic confusion. The city was 
surrounded by a military cordon. Incongruous self -contra- 
dictory measures were framed, discussed, adopted, and 
dropped. The brains of the rulers seemed paralysed. But 
one official remained as cool and detached as if nothing had 
happened. This man of nerve and resource was Plehve, the 
public prosecutor, destined soon to become Director of the 
Police Department, then Dictator of Russia and an instru- 
ment of Fate in her downfall. A thousand tongues anathema- 
tised the regicides and discussed ingenious measures of 
public safety. Students were badly mauled in the streets of 
the cities and a publican mistaken for a student was beaten 
to death before my eyes. From out of the din and tumult 
two alternative policies took definite shape and presented 
themselves to the new Emperor — the execution of his father's 
plan or a fresh spell of "resolute government," and he un- 
hesitatingly announced his preference for the former. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 79 

Many of the eminent people whom I met most frequently 
in those days, Katkoff, Pobiedonostseff, Philippoff, the 
Metropolitan Archbishop of St. Petersburg, Delyanoff, 
Komaroff, were ranged on the side of the autocracy and 
preached a crusade against the reform scheme which the 
Tsar proposed to carry out. Impressed by their attitude he 
first submitted it to his ministers in order to learn from their 
lips what results they expected it to yield. A majority w^armly 
declared for it and, curiously enough, the Grand Duke 
Vladimir was one of its most convinced spokesmen. I was 
personally acquainted with most of the others,^ but nearly 
half the votes were on the opposite side. 

The leader of the dissentients, the celebrated K. Pobie- 
donostseff, whose disinterested brooding over the cavernous 
deeps of human nature impressed the Emperor, was a host in 
himself. It was my privilege to meet this remarkable man 
over and over again during those historic days and later. 
After the Council of Ministers ^ at which Melikoff's reform 
project was debated, I heard him on the subject and watched 
him intently while he talked. For he looked like a man pos- 
sessed. His eyes were wild and his voice hollow like that, say, 
of Samuel raised from the dead. One such scene in par- 
ticular made a deep dent on my memory. He had been 
inveighing against Loris Melikoff, and asserting that the 
outcome of his project would be to turn over the Empire and 
its destinies to the scoundrels who had slain its protector and 
Tsar, and would fain annihilate all checks and restraints, 
divine and human. And clutching his head with his hands 
he repeatedly exclaimed, "They are mad, stark mad." 
Bessarion Komaroff who was present remarked, "It is for 
you to protect your imperial pupil from their folly." "Ah ! 
if only the Emperor would listen to me." "Have you doubts 
alx>ut it then?" "I am sure of nothing. The decision lies 
with him. He has heard my views and also those of Mil- 
yutin & Co. And he is hesitating l:)etween the two courses. 
At first he seemed ready to ratify the sinister scheme, but 

* Saburoff, NabokoflF, Sol sky, Abaza, and Milyutin. 
"Held on 20th March, 1881. 



80 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



1 

Still ■' 



happily he postponed the execution. And now we can still 
hope, but only hope." Then turning to Komaroff, the editor 
of the oldest journal in St. Petersburg, and to myself, who 
was then one of its leader writers, he said, 'The press has 
much to answer for and much to make good. You must go 
to work and help us. There is no time to be lost.'* The press 
had already gone to work with vigour and, in the case of 
the Moscow thunderer Katkoff, with virulence. Intrigues 
increased and multiplied and were conducted with profound 
secrecy by the reactionaries. The Liberal ministers were 
listless and self-satisfied, relying upon the Tsar's approval 
of the reform, expressed after his father's death and accom- 
panied by his promise to carry it out. He would not go back 
on his word after that, they said. They also thought he 
needed time to accustom himself to the concession. And 
they waited. The others worked. 

While the Tsar was hesitating between two courses Fate 
in its ironical mood played a trick which probably decided 
him. The reform which had actually been assented to by 
Alexander II. had, as we saw, been hindered by the very 
men who were sacrificing money, liberty, life, to attain it — 
the revolutionists. And now again, just when it was about 
to be confirmed, had, in fact, been confirmed in writing by 
the Tsar^ and the ministers, these same revolutionists 
through their executive committee sent him a long-winded, 
arrogant, and argumentative letter ^ taking credit for the 
murder of his father, but assuming that the son would see 
eye to eye with them and concede to vulgar threats what 
they fancied had been denied to reason. They ended their 
missive with a demand for a representative body to be 
chosen by free general election and, until the voting ceased, 
for liberty of the press, of speech, and of meeting. I received 
a copy of this curious document from S. K., who remarked 
that its effect on the Emperor would be like that of the red 
cloth on the bull in the ring. 'There is now no hope of a 

*By a remark penned on the project and by his announcement to the 
Grand Duke Vladimir. 
'Dated ioth/22nd March, 1881. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS 81 

constitution/* he added. "The executive committee of the 
revolutionary party is composed of downright fools." 

Rumours which ran wild in those troublous days credited 
the celebrated General Skobeleff with a sudden dictatorial 
impulse to which he was said to be giving reinless scope when 
chance or design removed him from the scene. There was 
no doubt that he was supremely dissatisfied with the course 
things political were taking, and it was known that he had 
sulkily refused a post offered to him by Loris Melikoff. I, 
who was then one of the representatives of the anti-German 
tendency in the Russian press, and was also in touch with an 
officer who was Skobeleff's intimate friend and boon com- 
panion, was well aware of that. According to the improbable 
story current, he harboured a plan to march at the head of 
a body of devoted troops, surround the Winter Palace, 
arrest the Tsar, and proclaim a constitution. In order the 
better to execute this scheme he took Count Nicholas 
Ignatieff, who had been Ambassador to Russia, into his 
confidence, and Ignatieff first approached Melikoff on the 
subject, but receiving no encouragement from that quarter, 
and fearing to be compromised, he denounced the plot to the 
Tsar. Such was the rumour. But the project was so utterly 
out of touch with all the circumstances that in the absence of 
good evidence, which is lacking, I shrink from ascribing it to 
a man like Skobeleff. For although ambitious he was also 
shrewd, had everything to lose by the probable failure of the 
scheme, and little or nothing to gain by its success which was 
doubtful. His sudden death, attributed to poison, has been 
instanced as a corroborative circumstance, but Skobeleff's 
life — a life like that of my fellow-student at the lectures on 
Genesis — explains his death quite as satisfactorily as the 
assumption that he fell by the hand of a member of the Holy 
League.^ 

Nearly two months passed in doubt and hesitation before 
the new Tsar made up his mind what course to strike out. 
*A secret society for the protection of the person of the Tsar, consist- 
ing of members of the noblHty presided over by the Grand Duke Vladimir, 
who agreed to adopt the methods of the terrorists, but appear to have 
shrunk from redeeming their pledge. 



82 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

In the end Pobiedonostseff won him over to autocracy and 
received the order to draw up a manifesto to the nation 
announcing the fateful decision, which was duly signed and 
promulgated.^ Loris Melikoff and some of his colleagues, 
who had not been informed of the Emperor's gradual con- 
version to the old ideas and had no foreknowledge of the 
manifesto, resigned and fell into disfavour. The revolu- 
tionists were roused to fury by the new course which was 
entered upon after so much deliberation, persevered in with 
firmness, and sustained with more method and thoroughness 
than is usual in Russian politics. Their anger was impotent, 
however, against the systematic precautions adopted by the 
new government, and they no longer had the sympathy of 
the people, without which no great Liberal movement could 
lead to practical results. The terrorists had overshot the 
mark and defeated their object, and new problems of absorb- 
ing interest in the economic domain received actuality and 
diverted public attention to other channels. Thus closed a 
thrilling chapter of Russian history which may be epitomised 
as a waste of energy for lack of vision. The government 
reproached the revolutionists with being out of touch with 
the people whose aims and strivings they misunderstood, 
and the revolutionists hurled back the taunt. Both were 
right. In the meanwhile the people's attitude towards the 
two adversaries resembled that of Candide towards Pangloss 
when he set forth his proofs that this is the best of all possible 
worlds, "Cela est bien dit, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin." 

*0n nth May. 






CHAPTER VI 
The Rule of the Bureau 

"My ideas about a change of regime and the kindred 
proposals that have been the cause of so much hatred and 
bloodshed/' said Pobiedonostseff, the Mentor of Alexander 
III., "are neither new nor complex" — he was talking to a 
knot of three or four persons including Komaroff and 
myself. "What a government ought to aim at is the happi- 
ness of the people. Now the elements of happiness vary 
with the different peoples and with their degrees of culture. 
What is needed in a legislator, therefore, besides a knowledge 
of the nation's actual requirements, is skill in adjusting his 
measures to these — this rather than a spirit of system. The 
Russian people differ widely from western nations both to 
their advantage and their disadvantage, and because they 
differ no one formula can be safely applied to lx)th. Call 
our peasants unsophisticated or uncivilised in the European 
sense, if you will, the fact remains that neither their spiritual 
instincts nor their moral restraints are adequate to subdue 
the ferocious passions that lie dormant in their breasts 
without the aid of physical sanctions. That is the leading 
fact and it should receive due weight. To a large extent our 
Church is answerable for this backwardness. What any 
government worth its salt must do, then, is to see that the 
Christian spirit is infused into the Church and keep the 
revolutionary poison from entering the veins of the nation. 
This does not involve stagnation. Progress there certainly 
must be, but it will have to l)e marked by ordered gradation. 
The triumph of Liberalism to-day would l>e the dissolution 
of the bonds that keep the community together and would 
entail decomposition." 

These were the maxims that inspired Pobiedonostseff 's 
policy at its best. But they remained maxims to the end. It 
was not until the middle of the next reign that he regretfully 

83 



84 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

admitted the impossibility of carrying out any coherent 
poHcy of regeneration for lack of qualified instruments. And 
these he had failed to find in Russia. What he had also over- 
looked was the impossibility, under his own system, of 
obtaining such agents, and if there had been any, of setting 
them feasible tasks. For the autocracy had by this time 
become a mere name for government by myriads of petty 
officials, each of whom worked separately under hardly any 
local and no central control, actuated by sordid motives and 
devoid alike of loyalty to the State and of a sense of duty. 
If the constitutional reform approved by Alexander II. had 
been embodied in institutions, and if the zemstvos, entrusted 
with fuller powers, had then been allowed to co-operate 
organically with each other, effective supervision and fruitful 
government would have been at least possible during a brief 
period of transition. By Pobiedonostseff's methods they 
were eliminated. The innovation inaugurated by this states- 
man consisted of a set of artificial checks and counter-checks 
of which the only justification was the perpetuation of the 
autocracy — and the principal result was to fortify the bureau- 
cracy and render it more of a parasite than before. It is fair 
to recognise that the State at that epoch had no other means 
of defence at its disposal. The curse of Russia had from the 
beginning of her history been the absence of effective moral 
restraints and the operation of mechanical substitutes. And 
now by way of bettering the plight to which the nation was 
thereby reduced it was proposed to increase the mere 
mechanical deterrents. Accordingly the individual and the 
community were called on to surrender their interests, aims, 
thoughts to salaried conscience-keepers, who were bereft of 
self-respect and often of moral integrity. General dissatis- 
faction was the immediate consequence ; the final outcome was 
the abysmal plunge. 

None the less the experiment was protracted throughout 
the entire reign of Alexander II. and a great part of that of 
his successor. The new Tsar, who had refused to consolidate 
the State and weaken the bureaucracy by means of the 
zemstvos, which he considered dangerous, appointed a 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 85 

complete set of chiefs for every department of public life 
and for every class of the population. Take one instance. 
The peasants, when serfs, had had but slight relations with 
the State and only indirectly through their masters. From 
the autocratic point of view this was a distinct advantage, 
for it simplified government by centralisation. But it lasted 
only as long as serfdom. Now that the emancipated peasants 
were being disaffected by terrorist propagandists and others, 
the Home Secretary devised a class of guardians ^ to shield 
them, whose sole qualification was nobility of birth, officials 
who were answerable only to the minister, and to these 
power was given over the bodies and souls of nine-tenths of 
the population. It was within the discretion of the new 
chiefs to rob and flog and persecute their wards; many of 
them used the power without ruth, and went so far as de- 
liberately and arbitrarily to hinder even agricultural develop- 
ment, the spread of instruction, and liberty of religious 
thought and creed. This new order of bureaucrats was in 
the nature of a final touch to a policy which drove the country 
out of its natural course and set it moving towards the abyss. 
For the emancipation of the serfs by bringing the govern- 
ment and the masses into direct communication necessitated 
a vast increase in the number of officials, each of whom, 
more or less independent of the government, wielded a 
certain degree of irresponsible power. So enormous was the 
mass of reports, edicts, warnings, and comments which 
passed between the centre and the circumference that the 
former could not possibly exercise supervision over the 
latter. The crying injustice and the farcical intermezzos 
that resulted would fill volumes. 

I rememl>er vaguely the case of a landed proprietor who, 
having mortgaged his estate and become insolvent, was 
unable to pay the interest to the State Bank. After the usual 
formalities the land and manor were to be put up for auction. 
He appealed to the Emperor for time to scrape together the 
amount of his debt, but in vain. One of his friends then 
advised him to go to a certain pissar ^ in the department — 

* Zemskiyi Natshalniki or district chiefs. " Scrivener, copyist, amanuensis. 



86 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

an amanuensis who received some sixty pounds a year — 
and offer him a hundred roubles for his help. He took the 
advice, paid the money, and had ample time to collect the 
requisite sum. The pissar through whose hands the order 
passed deliberately transformed the address on the envelope 
into a town in eastern Siberia by the change of two letters. 
The decree ordering the sale was despatched to the far east 
of the Tsardom and several months elapsed before the 
"mistake" was discovered and corrected. In this way the 
estate was saved. 

It was the segregation of the bureaucracy and the immense 
power it conferred upon irresponsible nobodies that ulti- 
mately drove in the wedge between it and the crown which 
finally contributed to split the structure of the State. If 
instead of devising the class of district chiefs or local tsarlets 
who made the confusion much worse than before, the 
government had reverted to the scheme of Alexander II. 
and set existing public bodies like the zemstvos to discharge, 
the functions of intermediaries and to co-operate with each 
other, a step would have been taken in the right direction, 
but it is doubtful whether at that late period Russia's evolu- 
tion would have progressed in its historic course. Count 
N. P. IgnatiefT, who became, for a short time. Minister of the 
Interior, discerned this possibility and suggested to Alexander 
III. the adoption of the political reform drafted by Loris 
Melikoff. But the idea was scouted by the Tsar's reactionary 
counsellors, Pobiedonostseff and Dmitry Tolstoy, where- 
upon Ignatieff had to withdraw into private life for the 
remainder of his days. Thus at irregular periods from the 
reign of Catherine II. downwards, Russian monarchs mani- 
fested velleities of internal reform, but the piratical spirit of 
the State stifled all such beginnings. 

Too much stress cannot be laid on the fact that from 
time immemorial political Russia has consisted of two 
classes, the masters and their workers, between whom 
yawned an abyss almost as wide as that between Spartan 
citizens and helots. 

Military force and a certain proportion between thej 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 87 

rulers' striving for territorial expansion and their achieve- 
ments kept the arrangement from breaking down. From 
early days onward to the reign of Ivan the Terrible the force 
was directed mainly against internal enemies, independent 
principalities, or the Tartars, while the masses were left 
largely to their own resources. The ruler invariably struck 
up a tacit partnership with the soldiers, his instruments for 
the extension and maintenance of his power, and in virtue 
of this partnership they became materially interested in his 
success, being certain of a large part of the booty. It should 
be borne well in mind that this co-operative system, with 
seasonable modifications, has been the type of regime in 
Russia down to the revolution of 191 7. Thus Ivan the 
Terrible was served by his guards — opritchniki — who bene- 
fited very extensively by his conquests. Peter transformed 
the opritchina into an army, and the rude system of civil 
service into a bureaucratic hierarchy whose principal func- 
tion it was to bind together the conflicting elements of the 
Empire and keep their centri frugal tendencies permanently 
under control. 

This system yielded for a time all the good of which it 
was capable, but it was always in danger of degenerating into 
organised parasitism. So long, however, as the central 
authority was able to survey and direct the doings of its 
agents the mechanism worked with passable smoothness. 
But the bureaucracy was swamped by a deluge of new 
officials after the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander II., 
and when his successor aggravated the evil by appointing a 
host of intermediaries invested with practically unlimited 
power the bureaucracy ceased to be the organ of the auto- 
crat, and rapidly became a monstrous parasite which preyed 
on the body of the Russian nation and lived for itself alone. 

In this respect there was a striking contrast between the 
Tsardom and the Kaiserdom. For in spite of its kinglets, 
princes, and ^^rand dukes, Germany is a federation of twentv- 
six independent States governed each one by its own con- 
scientious administration which is thorou<^dily acquainted 
with its needs, capacities, and temper, and is able to play 



88 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

upon all its chords with the certainty of evoking the wished- 
for response. Nowhere do the Saxons, the Bavarians, or the 
other independent peoples come into actual contact with the 
obnoxious forms of imperial absolutism. These are caught 
and transformed by the local government organism which 
has the welfare of the people at heart. The Tsardom, on the 
contrary, lay heavy on each province, nationality, religion, 
tribe, and individual, and rendered progress well-nigh impos- 
sible and existence difficult. 

It was to free the people from that mighty vampire that 
the revolution was conceived by the intellectuals. The 
fundamental error committed by its promoters was that they 
treated the masses as Ivan the Terrible had treated his 
opritchniki, and offered them a share in the booty — the land 
— whereupon the people contented itself with reversing the 
existing system, or rather democratising it, and took to prey- 
ing on the classes that possessed land, fortune, culture. 

Among the various revolutionary agencies which were at 
work since I first went to Russia, the most unpretending, 
indirect, and effective were certain religious sectarians. For 
many years I was the spokesman in the west of religious 
communities which were being ground in the dust by 
Pobiedonostseff's autocratic steam-roller.^ Roman Catholics, 
Lutherans, Old Believers, Stundists, Dookhobortsy were all 
in turn the victims of oppression. But the sects which were 
penalised with the utmost ferocity of theological hatred were 
those rationalistic creeds which apply unrestricted criticism 
to revealed religion, freely draw their own practical con- 
clusions and apply these to all the problems of life. For the 
Russian is a born dialectician who pursues an argument to 
its uttermost corollary without qualification or reserve. He 
recoils from no conclusion. The circumstance that the 
upshot is an absurdity is, in his eyes, no test of the falseness 
of his premises. Hence the astounding tenets and brutal 
practices of many of the most wide-spread religious com- 
munities such as the self-mutilators, the suicidal sects, and 
the Khlysty from whom Rasputin took some of his doctrines. 

* The articles in question appeared in the Fortnightly, Contemporary, and 
National Reviews. 



1 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 89 

Now the rationalistic denominations made no distinction 
between politics and religion in the application of their 
critical solvents. They applied the same test to both. Some 
of them, like the Dookhobortsy, denounced war as a crime, 
forbade their adepts to don military uniform, refused to pay 
taxes, and generally prescribed limits beyond which obedience 
to the State became sinful. Obviously these rivals to the 
government could not be tolerated by Pobiedonostseff, 
engaged as he then was on a delicate experiment of the 
highest import. But he made no distinction between these 
groups and others whose members were more law-abiding. 
Hence the history of the religious movement of the reign is 
a chronicle of relentless persecution on the one hand and of 
Russian heroism on the other, and in its political aspect a 
chapter of the origins of the breakdown of the entire frame- 
work of Tsarism. 

Coercion in religious matters did more to spread political 
disaffection than the most enterprising revolutionary propa- 
gandists. It turned the best spirits of the nation against the 
tripartite system of God, Tsar, and fatherland, and con- 
vinced even average people not only that there was no life- 
giving principle in the State, but that no faculty of the 
individual or the nation had room left for unimpeded growth. 
Whithersoever one turned progress was barred by artificial 
obstacles. Schools, universities, the bar, the law courts, 
the press, the church and the chapel, the peasants' reunions, 
the zemstvo assemblies were so many narrow cages in which 
thought as well as action were caught and confined. The bulk 
of the nation felt the economic pressure of this gigantic in- 
cubus most painfully, for except in the religious domain it 
was rare that curiosity of an intellectual character made itself 
felt among the peasants, and then it generally assumed 
grotesque shapes. The moral and intellectual condition of 
the people had not perceptibly changed since their first 
appearance in history, and it was clear to the student of 
national psychology that its manifestations, whenever the 
tight bonds of the bureaucracy should snap, were certain to 
vie in lawlessness and savagery with those of the pre- 



90 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



bleml' 



Christian era. This was a momentous aspect of the problei 
which was entirely neglected by all countries of the west. 
Another was to be found in the unwonted social conditions 
which were being created and fostered by Witte's policy of 
industrialisation. The need for canalising and regulating 
the new forces thus springing into life was fast growing per- 
emptory, but the only agencies devised by the government to 
cope with them were those of the police and the Orthodox 
Church. By these queer educators myriads of the Tsar's 
subjects were being systematically pinioned and cooped in 
ways so hateful that vast forces of revolt and destruction were 
generated and stored up against the day of reckoning. 

It was the regenerated Church that Pobiedonostseff hoped 
to use as a compensating counter-force to the defects of the 
State and the drawbacks of its new economic policy. But 
the instrument broke in his hands. The orthodox Russian 
Church could not yield the regenerative virtue which itself 
did not possess. For it was but an interesting relic of the 
past. Even when first brought from Byzantium to Kieff it 
was little more than a set of old forms and ceremonies which 
the primitive Slavs were forced by their ruler to adopt. The 
one spark of vitality that still glowed among its dry ashes 
was the spirit of asceticism that dovetailed admirably with 
the natural religion of the tribes which Vladimir, their prince, 
drove into the Byzantine fold. An intimate friend of mine, 
one of the most Christian distinguished members of the 
Russian Church, whose life was dedicated to the work ^ of 
freeing it from the deforming crust of ages, affirms that it 
lacks a truly spiritual government. *'The Russian Church," 
he wrote, *'bereft of support and of a centre of unity out- 
side the State, became of necessity subject to the secular 
power . . . and unavoidably ended in anti-Christian abso- 
lutism." From the tenth century, when it was transplanted 
in Slav soil, down to the present day Russian orthodoxy has 
been singularly devoid of intellectual and, indeed, moral 

* Vladimir Solovieff. I possess two studies of his on theological ques- 
tions which he wrote in my note books during the meetings at which he, 
A. Pashkofif, and myself were wont to discuss philosophical, theological, 
and political questions in St. Petersburg. 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 91 

life and movement. The gropings of individual and collective 
God-seekers among the ignorant people proceeded — as I 
maintained against Tolstoy's Christian theory — from the 
natural bent of the Slav character towards mysticism and 
morbid introspection pushed to its extreme consequences. 
Hence the multiplicity of strange barbarous sects that bring 
one back, not only to the feats of Simon Stylites, but to the 
still more awful penances of the great Indian ascetics who 
by dint of cruel self-torture surmounted titantic obstacles and 
won for themselves the state of godhead. 

The organisation of the Russian Church, but not its dogmas 
or practices, has varied with that of the secular governments. 
Since the days of Peter, who tolerated no rivals, it has had 
no visible head other than the Tsar. By that reformer the 
patriarchate was abolished and a synod of bishops instituted 
in its stead, to each of whose members an oath was ad- 
ministered by which he acknowledged the sovereign as the 
supreme judge of the convocation. And by way of stifling 
all tendencies to independence the hierarchy of the clergy 
was divided into ranks corresponding to the military grades, 
so that a metropolitan archbishop is equal to a ''full general," 
an archbishop to a lieutenant-general, whereas a secular clergy- 
man, do what he may, cannot hope to swing himself into a 
higher rank than that of colonel. 

I long occupied a favourable post of observation from 

which to study the working of the Church mechanism, for I 

was honoured not only with the friendship of Vladimir 

Solovieff, the one great theologian ^ and moral philosopher 

Russia has produced, but also with that of Isidore, the 

Metropolitan Archbishop of Petersburg and Finland, of 

the Metropolitans Plato of Kieff, Ambrose of Kharkoff, 

Nikanor of Kherson, Michael of Serbia, and of the 

clerical laymen Tertius Philippoff, Professor Cayetan 

Kossowicz, Athanasius Bytchkoff, and others. I was the 

private adviser of the Metropolitan Isidore during one of the 

most interesting epochs of his life, heard his criticism of 

* Before I met Solovieff, in the reign of Alexander II., I had studied the 
theological writings of Khomyakoff. But they are the work of an 
amateur who read a number of foreign treatises on Church history. 



92 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Pobiedonostseff, who vainly endeavoured to get rid of him 
by sending him to a monastery, and his shrewd observa- 
tions on the Tsar Alexander III. and the Tsaritsa. A certain 
amount of his foreign correspondence passed through my 
hands. I once composed an encyclical letter in his name 
addressed to all orthodox and other Christian Churches 
throughout the world, and having had it approved by him 
and signed for promulgation, it occurred to me that Pobiedo- 
nostseff would protest against the innovation, which implied 
a sort of supremacy of the metropolitan over the Russian 
Church, and would force the prelate to resign. Without 
giving this as my reason for withholding the letter which I 
still possess as a curiosity I wrote a differently worded and 
less ambitious pastoral over the archbishop's signature which 
was duly published.^ 

I also carried on a correspondence, on behalf of that 
prelate, with several representative members of the Anglican 
Church, including bishops and archbishops, mainly on the 
subject of the reunion of their respective communions. In 
the intervals the archbishop and myself calmly talked the 
matter over in its theological and political aspects. The prel- 
ate was a shrewd self-educated peasant whose acquaintance- 
ship with theology and Church history was superficial, but 
whose knowledge of Russia and human nature was thorough. 
He saw distinctly that the line of cleavage between the two 
Churches was not really theological, and that even if it were, 
it could not be obliterated for lack of a central authority to 
pronounce judgment. As the problem was largely political 
he knew that even Pobiedonostseff himself was powerless 
to solve it. Finally he perceived that the Russian Church 
could not move in the matter without the support of the 
other branches of orthodoxy which might not be obtainable. 
And he nearly always ended up these discussions with the 
words, ''We need not insist on these things in our corre- 
spondence. They — the Anglicans — must not be scared. 
After all they are well-meaning and also, I am told, generous 
people, and I want to appeal to them for help for my 
orthodox mission in Japan. Lay stress, therefore, on our 
^At first in the Daily Telegraph. 



1 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 93 

desire to work for reunion and allude to the question of 
orders which is admittedly a solid hindrance." 

This venerable prelate, who captivated me by his racy 
language, his rare shrewdness, and his delightful outspoken- 
ness, was wont to say that no one could understand the 
Russian people who had not studied their religious con- 
ceptions. A friend of his once suggested that I should apply 
for a professorship which had fallen vacant at the theo- 
logical academy of Petrograd. Although I had no positive 
grounds for believing that it would be given to me, some 
friends urged me to present my application in writing, 
together with my qualifications, to the President of the 
Academy, Yanysheff, who was a persona grata at court in 
spite of his Lutheran leanings in theology. This I accord- 
ingly did. After the lapse of a considerable time he sent for 
me and said that a preliminary condition to my admission 
to compete for the professorship would be my conversion 
to the State Church. In vain my friends pointed out that a 
Jewish professor was actually teaching Hebrew there. The 
answer was that there was no parity between Hebrew and 
philosophy. The rule, therefore, was upheld and my candi- 
dature fell to the ground. 

Thereupon my friend, the archbishop, strongly urged me 
to devote part of my life to the study of religion in Russia 
and to pay special care to the origins, growth, and influence 
of the various sects on the character and habits of the people. 
The speculations of Vladimir Solovieff, combined with the 
metropolitan's advice, led me to inquire closely into the 
history of the orthodox and heretical communions in the 
country, to read the epistles, narratives, and discourses of 
the early Russian writers, ecclesiastical and lay, to investigate 
the curious problems suggested by the countless and grotesc^ue 
sects, and to find out from the sectarians themselves what 
human or peculiarly Russian needs were satisfied by tlieir 
respective tenets and practices. In obtaining materials for 
these investigations I was assisted by the metropolitan 
archbishop and the Home Secretary, Count Dmitry Tolstoy, 
an alhci.st and cx-head of the Russian Church, through 



94 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

whose intervention a number of important secret reports 
sectarianism in the Empire ^ were communicated to me, bear- 
ing mainly upon what one might term the grotesque in reli- 
gious aberrations. 

It was while I was engaged in these studies that the work 
of regenerating the Russian people was undertaken by 
Pobiedonostseff, who had, meanwhile, become chief of the 
Most Holy Synod. This statesman hugged the delusion 
that political and social betterment in the autocratic sense 
would result from that uprising of religious sentiment which 
he was exerting himself to effect. He was an honest, selfless 
fanatic who would set his eyes on a goal and move towards 
it. with steadfast tread without paying heed to the pitfalls 
in his path. Pobiedonostseff the layman was one of the few 
educated clericals in the Orthodox Church. To this institu- 
tion he allotted a state mission for which, in so far as it was 
compatible with its natural functions, it could not be fitted 
in less than two or three generations. I may say at once 
that I was favourably impressed by his intentions and amazed 
by the warp that vitiated his judgment. He was the victim 
of an idea which, after the manner of so many of his country- 
men, he deemed capable of universal application, the fusion 
of autocracy, orthodoxy, and nationalism in one trinitarian 
conception. This it was that stirred in him a praiseworthy 
endeavour to infuse religious ichor into the Church, which 
would enable it to accomplish its lofty mission and render 
the Russian people a sharer in mysterious grace of which it 
would have become the repository. 

As liberty of conscience would be tantamount to the 
abandonment of this object it was withheld. In view of the 
process of disintegration going on in the Church and of 
the weakness of its spiritual and moral fibre, such freedom 
would sap its foundations and those of the autocracy with 
which it was indissolubly bound up. Moreover, disbelief in 

*I was allowed to retain some of these reports only after having taken 
an oath and signed an undertaking to keep them always under lock and 
key. One work in especial, on the Sect of the Skoptsy, with copious 
illustrations, contains amazing revelations of the unnatural lengths to 
which a warped religious spirit will go. 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 95 

Church dogmas, especially when accompanied, as in the 
rationalistic sects, by a critical attitude of mind towards all 
institutions and traditions, is, it was argued, hardly to be dis- 
tinguished from disloyalty to the Tsar. Accordingly Pobie- 
donostseff refused to make a distinction. And yet he was not 
characterised by hardness of heart, but the problem which 
he tackled bristled with difficulties and provoked acts which 
put him often in contradiction with his better self. These 
painful dilemmas were sometimes reflected in official records. 
The Ober-Procurator of the Most Holy Synod, who, unlike 
his atheistic predecessor,^ was a fervent believer, published 
every year a report on the progress of orthodoxy, the vicissi- 
tudes of its struggle with the revolted sectarians, and a plan of 
campaign for the immediate future. In these annuals he 
invariably underlined the necessity of ''influencing the erring 
ones by meekness and mildness, in the spirit of tolerance, 
of Christian love and indulgence." On the other hand, 
however, he was wont to complain of the indulgence dis- 
played by the secular arm, of the inaction of the civil ad- 
ministration, and of the apathy of the tribunals which, he 
maintained, sometimes connived at and even helped to 
spread the false doctrines. Education, religion, toleration, 
freedom of the press, co-operation of any kind among citi- 
zens, excepting Church sodalities, were judged to be incom- 
patible with the good ordering of the realm. 

I was much struck with the contradictions between words 
and deeds in which this policy involved Fobiedonostseff. 
In the year 1883 a law was passed allowing the Stundists — 
a sort of Baptist sect — to meet in and possess prayer halls on 
the same footing as the Old Believers,- and it also implicitly 
permitted members of the State Church to join their com- 
munity. But in reality hard labour, banishment to a deadly 
climate, and loss of the custody of their children were among 
the penalties inflicted on those who forsook orthodoxy for 
Evangelical Christianity. The Stundists were on the 

* Count Dmitry Tolstoy. 

'A section of the Orthodox Church which differs from it only on 
trivial points of fprm. 



96 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

blackest books of the Synod. * 'Uncommonly pernicious 
ecclesiastically and politically" was the label affixed to them 
by Pobiedonostseff. A Russian press organ of high standing ^ 
brandmarked later on the action taken against these and 
other religions as disgraceful. These sectarians, we read, 
''are not only prosecuted, but are hounded down after the 
fashion of the Middle Ages. Banishment to Siberia and 
Transcaucasia, confinement in monastery prisons, scourging 
with Cossack whips, military repressions like that of the 
Dookhobortsy in 1895, arbitrary injustice like the removal of 
the children of the Molokani from their parents' custody in 
1897, frequent lynchings of sectarians by the artificially 
incited masses as in 1901,^ these are a few of the facts which 
outline the legal status, or rather the outlawing of religious 
dissenters." ^ 

One can readily imagine the influence on the impression- 
able population of Russia of these fanaticised people when 
forcibly dispersed over the Empire. For they were respected 
by their fellow-subjects, unlike the Dookhobortsy who 
refused to serve in the army, were flighty, and liable at times 
to fits of religious mania. The example of the Stundists was 
bracing. Their farms were well kept, their houses clean, their 
word was respected. Yet 200,000 of them were at one time 
making ready to emigrate in batches. To my knowledge 
many quitted their country. One of the most influential 
organs of the press wrote of them: *'The Stundists have 
never refused to serve in the army or to pay taxes. They 
were and still are the most peaceful of our citizens; they 
are characterised by sobriety and clean living, by industry 
and love of order . . . and none the less they were accused 
of various 'propensities,' political and social, and the 
opinion of the Committee of Ministers * stigmatised them 
as 'especially pernicious.' Since then they have been 
deprived of their rights of praying together even in private 
apartments, huts, and other dwellings. Is such a state of 

^ Russkia Vedomosti, i6th December, 1904. 

*In the provinces of Kieff and Kherson. 

^Russkia Vedomosti, loco cit. 

* The body which legislated for religious sects "in a tolerant spirit." 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 97 

things normal, nay, is it even bearable?"^ And yet it was 
in truth a necessity — if the Tsarist State was to be preserved. 

The immediate consequence of this legislation was sys- 
tematic law-breaking which, becoming a meritorious act, 
had a demoralising effect upon large sections of the popula- 
tion, and a further result was utter contempt of the govern- 
ment. Compelled to choose between a violation of what 
they believed to be God's precept and of sinful man's 
vagaries or malice, these latter-day saints made short work 
of the latter. In the sectarian diocese of Nishny Novgorod 
there were only twelve Stundist meeting places licensed by 
the authorities for about 75,000 persons, whereupon 172 
others were opened illegally. Sixty such prayer halls were 
secretly established in the province of Vyatka. In this way 
millions of dissenters were turned into political offenders 
and the country was honeycombed with disaffection. For 
the principle of the State was that all Russians should be 
gently or roughly pushed into the true fold and get into 
contact with the Creator through the conducting medium of 
His lieutenant the Tsar. 

The Old Believers, with whom I was in close contact, were 
in numerous cases forbidden to marry in their own church. 
Those who disregarded the prohibition were punished by 
a decree declaring their children bastards and their wives 
concubines. A Russian publicist who for years evinced an 
enlightened interest in ecclesiastical matters wrote of these, 
"They are devoid of the right of bringing up a family; 
they are debarred from the civil service; they are disquali- 
fied from praying. . . . All this I affirm positively, and with- 
out diverging a hair's breadth from the reality. When I 
read a letter from the Ural that the marriages of the Old 
Believers — whose domestic life is assuredly more serene, 
more modest, more pious than ours — are not recognised; 
that their wives, their mothers, their grandmothers, con- 
tinue to be officially set down as spinsters; that the union 
of the husband and wife who have been married in accord- 
ance with the old Russian liturgy is termed fornication, 

* Russkoye Slovo, 19th February, 1905. 



98 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

just as are the unchaste bonds that link the drunkards and 
the thieves down in Gorky's Depths, I confess it made my 
hair stand on end. The Depths of Gorky, indeed! Here 
are the real depths. It is not merely that these people are said 
to live badly; but the law defines, classifies, and establishes 
such rules and regulations for them as though they were dogs, 
and denies them civil rights, even such an elementary right 
of mankind as that of having a family. 

"The State is only wielding its right when it disqualifies 
for its service alike the hooligan from the depths and the 
honourable dissenting merchant, whom in this respect it 
sets on a level with the thief. For it may do what it likes with 
its own. But let the savage Samoyede from the Arctic circle 
on the one hand set about marrying his Samoyed woman, 
and the Russian nonconformist on the other hand wed the 
dissenting girl, and see then what happens. The former, 
as is known, prays to a wooden doll, and the latter to St. 
Nicholas, the Wonder-worker.^ Yet the State says, *I 
recognise the Samoyed marriage, but I declare that the 
dissenters are living in forbidden unchaste intimacy, and 
this mother of six and that mother of ten children are but 
spinsters guilty of fornication.' " ^ 

The extent to which the persecution requisite to the 
success of Pobiedonoststeff's campaign was carried is hardly 
credible to any but those who witnessed it. I was asked once 
to approach that statesman or one of his colleagues on 
behalf of an orthodox priest named Tsvetkoff,^ whose fixed 
idea was to emancipate the Church from her subservience to 
the lay elements and in particular to the State. Like so many 
of his countrymen he was a dialectician. He pointed out 
that one of the recent heads of the Most Holy Synod * was 
an atheist, that simony is a common and anti-Christian 
practice, that the Holy Synod is less a channel of divine 
grace than a department of the police, and that an cecumeni- 

'The difference in the intercessors may appear, perhaps, less important 
to western peoples than to the eminent Russian writer, 
*V. V. Rozanoff, Novoye Vrcmya, 17th February, 1905. 
"Of the province of Tamboff, 
* Count Dmitry Tolstoy, 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 99 

cal council should be summoned without delay. It Is not 
to be wondered at that the Holy Synod condemned Tsvet- 
koff to be interned in the monastery prison of Suzdal.^ He 
was met at the threshold by the abbot, an ex-artillery colonel, 
who welcomed him with the words, "Hitherto you have 
been singing! Eh? Well, henceforth you will have to 
dance." The story of this priest's experience is valuable for 
the light it sheds on the ecclesiastical spirit that prevailed 
during the reign of Alexander HI. and the first period of that 
of Nicholas II. and for the partial explanation it contributes 
of the upheaval that followed. For although it is true that 
the political and social revolutions of the year 19 17 were at 
the outset the work of a minority, it may be laid down as an 
axiom that in the long run no political movement of im- 
portance could hope for even partial success unless it had 
the tacit support of the bulk of the people. 

Tsvetkoff wrote down his impressions at the time and 
they were sent on to me. Here is the thrilling story in his 
own words: "A horrible feeling crept over me when this 
grave opened to receive me. It became more awful still when 
I began to realise where I was: I occupied a cell between 
two men who were stark mad. There was a little aperture 
in each door, and from time to time one or other of my 
neighbours would approach this opening and scream at the 
top of his voice. His ravings would be interlarded with 
horrible curses wreaked upon my head, the head of an 
impious heretic, and these shouts which gave me the shivers 
were kept up for thirty or forty minutes and more. Even 
now I shudder when I call them to mind. The soldiers on 
guard outside would gaze at me intently through the aper- 
ture, but none showed any pity. I used to ask them whether 
they suspected me or had anything to say to me, but then the 
eye at the hole would vanish for a time to appear soon after 
again. That, too, was torture. 

"The military had it in their power to poison a prisoner's 
life, and they utterly poisoned mine. We were left entirely 
to their charge by the monks, who scarcely ever meddled. 
* In the province of Vladimir. 



100 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Hence the soldiers could hinder a man from walking in the 
corridor, could prevent him from getting tea, and generally 
embitter his existence by petty persecution. But it was quite 
easy to win their favour by bribing whenever a prisoner had 
anything to give. I had nothing. I remember Podgorny, 
a member of the mystic sect of the Khlysty, who was im- 
prisoned there, and as he had wealthy friends outside he 
often received cakes and other delicacies. 

*'At last I discovered from scraps of conversation among 
the soldiers that they took me for a madman. That was 
probably what they had been told. That discovery nearly 
unhinged my reason. When living outside I had often been 
threatened with imprisonment in Suzdal monastery prison, 
but I had never once realised that in that fortress there were 
veritable graves for the living. Now I knew it and shuddered. 
I was buried alive. 

"The casemates of the fortress are dreadful stone cages. 
When I had spent a few hours in mine I thought I could 
not remain another month there and survive. But weeks 
passed and many months more. And day after day I had the 
feeling that I might break down at any moment, that I must 
break down very soon. In this way a twelvemonth lapsed 
and then another. I feared my reason was going. I was 
becoming desperate, and I took a desperate resolution after 
I had been about two and a half years in that miserable den. 

*T wrote a declaration to Abbot Seraphim, setting forth 
that, although I had never been tried on any charge, yet here 
I was being punished as though guilty of infamous crimes. 
That was unjust, I said, and I protested against it with 
vigour. If I had done wrong let it be shown in what I had 
offended and I would bear my punishment as becomes a 
man. I therefore asked to be tried in public, and if not found 
guilty to be set free. But I must refuse to die piecemeal in 
a dungeon. Life was bereft of its meaning for me. It was 
more than I could bear. I informed the abbot, therefore, 
that unless I were shortly tried or set free I would abstain 
from food and die of hunger. 

"To that letter I received no answer. I waited but 



^1 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 101 

Abbot Seraphim made no sign. It was as though he were 
leagues away. Then I set about fulfilling my resolution. 
On 13th November, 1903, I resolved to eat no more. 
Thenceforth the food which was brought to my cell remained 
untasted. My health began to ebb and soon failed. I ceased 
to move about. Languor and dreaminess came over me, and 
then the burning pangs of thirst. Hunger was terrible, but 
thirst was maddening. My tongue dried up, my lips were 
parched, and I thought I could see madness as a spectre. 
It was agonising torture. Then I pulled myself together, 
got up, and walked as well as I could to the end of the cell 
and reached up to the window where owing to the cold and 
dampness icicles were hanging down. I managed to break 
off some and melting them in my palms quenched my 
thirst. I knew a day would come when exhaustion would 
keep me lying down and I should have no icicles to quench 
the fire in my vitals. It was a horrible thought; altogether 
it was a painful process to die thus inch by inch, to lose hope 
after hope, without human sympathy or spiritual consola- 
tion, abandoned by heaven and earth. That is how it seemed 
at times when the outlook was most dismal." 

Meanwhile Abbot Seraphim grew alarmed. A prisoner 
under his care was slowly starving himself to death in order 
to obtain justice. A word in time might hinder the tragedy. 
And it was his duty to get this word pronounced. He 
accordingly despatched a telegram to the Most Holy Synod, 
unfolding the facts and asking for instructions. Father 
Tsvetkoff was refusing food — would die of hunger in a few 
days urfless he were removed from the fortress. Was it the 
will of the exalted body, which stands in loco Christi, that 
this man should be saved from death by an act of common 
justice, or that he should die? Those were certainly not the 
exact terms of his message, but they give the tenor of it. 
The answer, as he probably anticipated it, was not doubtful. 
Christian charity enjoined mercy as a duty and worldly 
prudence suggested it as a policy. Seraphim t(x:)k the answer 
for granted, and removed his prisoner from the fortress to 
a monk's cell. And it was not a moment too soon. 



102 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Eighteen days of fasting and abstinence ^ had worn 
priest to a skeleton. Pithless, bloodless, pinched, and power- 
less, he lay on the hard couch in his new abode. "I knew 
I should die if I ate much," he remarked, "so I took a littl 
gruel that day and a little more on the day following 
meant to go back very gradually to normal diet." Mean 
while the reply from the Most Holy Synod was hourly 
expected. The Abbot Seraphim had telegraphed on the 
2nd December, but strange to say the 4th Decembe 
brought no answer before sundown. In the evening, how 
ever, a telegram was received from the Most Holy Synod. 
The abbot opened it, read it, and grew very agitated. It was 
impersonal, and these were the words of it: "The priest, 
TsvetkofiF, is to be again put back in the prisoners' section, 
and if he dies of hunger the Most Holy Synod is to be 
immediately informed, so that measures may be taken on 
its behalf relating to the funeral." 

These instructions came like a thunderbolt from an azure 
sky. Even the shifty abbot, who thought he knew the world 
and the Most Holy Synod, was taken aback. The priest . . . 
merely steeled his will to die. He announced his determina- 
tion to refuse food once more. Abbot Seraphim had no 
choice but to obey instructions, but he expressed his sym- 
pathy for his prisoner and assured him that he would at 
once write to St. Petersburg and leave nothing undone to 
have the cruel order rescinded. The danger was that success 
might come too late. Tsvetkoff continues: "I read that 
telegram as though it were my death warrant. Hopelessness 
mingled with the gloom and damp of my cell, but before 
abandoning myself to my fate I wrote my last will, request- 
ing that no requiem service ^ be held for the repose of my 
soul. Then I settled down to the process of dying by hunger. 
One day ^ I was roused from my torpor and unexpectedly 
set free. Seraphim's advocacy had triumphed. I was 
released from the hateful fortress, but was compelled to 

^From 15th November to 3rd December. 

' Coming from an orthodox priest this was an odd, an heretical, in- 
junction. 

" 13th December. 



I 



I 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 103 

occupy a cell in the monastery where I am still. I can take 
no step, say no word, cast no glance, but it is noticed and 
recorded. My health? It is broken up, I fear, for ever." 

It should not be forgotten that these revolting iniquities 
were literally beyond count, nor that they were perpetrated 
with the approbation and for the behoof of the Church and 
the autocracy, the two sources of authority in the Empire. 
And yet Pobiedonostseff was not naturally a harsh man, he 
was only a Russian dialectician, a man who, when pressed 
into a tight place, confronted with a logical but absurd con- 
clusion from his premises, and asked whether he will admit 
that, exclaims, **Well, and why not?'* To me his answer 
when I approached him on the subject of the sectarians was 
exactly the same that I received several years later from the 
men who afterwards became Duma leaders when I adjured 
them to support Witte's administration and promised them 
on his behalf the power within a twelvemonth, "It is im- 
possible." "But if you persist," I argued, "you will ruin 
your own cause, you will bring about results that must 
destroy it." "Well, Dr. Dillon, I really thought that you 
at least understood the character of our people. But now I 
see that I was mistaken." 

Pobiedonostseff's instincts were on the side of organised 
authority, religious, moral, and political, and he honestly 
believed that its most effective organ is a single person. 
Unlike many other reformers he was not personally ambitious, 
in fact he merged his personality in the cause. He might 
have had the pick and choice of offices in the administration, 
but he contented himself with the least and kept as far in 
the background as was compatible with the exercise of his 
functions. He aspired to place the Russian State on a solid 
foundation, derived from its historic past, and to raise it 
to the highest place among the nations of Europe. This, 
too, was the principal object on which his colleague. Count 
Dmitry Tolstoy, as Home Secretary, exercised his ingenuity 
and concentrated his energy. They both saw clearly that 
the emancipation of the serfs had effected two great changes 
to the detriment of the autocracy. On the one hand it had 



104 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

increased the numerical strength and extended the inde- 
pendence and irresponsibility of the bureaucracy so that 
the organism that should have supplied progress with 
motive power degenerated into a monstrous parasite that 
sucked the life blood of the nation. On the other hand it 
ruined the nobility economically and therefore politically, 
and compelled Tsarism either to seek the support of the 
masses or to revive the order of nobles, if indeed that order 
was still capable of coming back to life. 

The two statesmen chose different props for the institu- 
tion they wished to safeguard : Tolstoy, the atheist, put his 
trust in the nobility and began by bettering their material 
condition, founding a bank to minister to their needs, giving 
them exclusive rights to occupy posts as district chiefs and 
bend the peasantry to the government's aims, and he ended 
by awakening to the fatal circumstance that the nobility was 
politically dead and could not be resuscitated. Pobiedonost- 
seff came slightly nearer to the correct formula, but was 
still so far off that the difference between them was negligible. 
Aware that the bulk of the nation was still backward and raw, 
he imagined that the Orthodox Church, which was identi- 
fied with the principal organs of the national life, could win 
opinion and sentiment to the autocratic ordering of political 
and social arrangements and enable Tsarism to lean upon the 
bulk of the Russian nation. His ideal of the State was a sort 
of Slav Paraguay directed by the Orthodox clergy. He, too, 
was doomed to disappointment and failure because, for one 
thing, the Orthodox Church had never been an organic 
power in Russia, but a mere State department which in- 
variably condemned dissent in the political sphere far more 
severely than conflicts in the region of belief. The notion 
that such an artificial institution should be able to leaven, 
transform, and ennoble the befogged anarchist masses and 
form a pedestal out of them for Tsarism was the golden dream 
of a visionary. 

One day I expressed all this in courtly phraseology and 
in the form of an objection made by his opponents. "They 
are just as little acquainted with the Russian masses," he 



THE RULE OF THE BUREAU 105 

answered, "as foreigners are. Our people differ from all 
others, and must be handled differently. What is meat to 
the British is poison to the Russian." The truth is that 
Pobiedonostseff, like his political adversaries and indeed 
like all Russian "intellectuals," misread the basic character 
of his own people and — what is still more extraordinary — 
of some of its most significant mamlFestations. He does not 
seem to have fully understood the nature of the State or the 
instincts of the masses. A lover of forms and a skilful sophist 
he was incapable of singling out the central issue of any 
problem. 

I last met him at the close of his life when the grasp of 
autocracy on the country was loosening and the twilight of 
orthodoxy had set in. Pobiedonostseff, then in delicate 
health, was gloomy, querulous, despondent. But although 
he may have had an inkling of the magnitude of the calami- 
ties that were about to overwhelm his country, it may 
well be doubted whether he reckoned his own life-work as 
one of their contributory causes. And yet it is patent that 
his ideas were dissolvent and that the attempt to realise them 
by force accelerated the break-up of a society already pro- 
foundly disorganised. Autocracy, it is true, had long since 
become incompetent for any positive function, and the 
Russian Church had never been fitted for its spiritual 
mission. The sectarians, who at first had asked only to be 
allowed to pray and were being persecuted in the name 
of God and the Tsar, turned to political propaganda in 
order to obtain religious freedom, and in doing this tainted 
the masses with disaffection. 

Politically the Russian people, since their appearance in 
history, have oscillated between absolutism and anarchism, 
and in the religious domain between sectarian asceticism and 
rank unl)elief. What Pobiedonostseff did was to com- 
promise orthodoxy and autocracy, to damage the cause of 
religion and of the Tsardom, to strengthen the bureaucracy 
at the expense of the monarch, to favour its parasitic instincts, 
and to undermine the principle of authority at its source. 



CHAPTER VII 
The Advent of Nicholas II 

During the latter years of the tranquil reign of Alexandei 
III. the drift of the Tsardom was manifestly in the direction oi 
political change, but the course taken was mainly economic! 
Witte succeeded in introducing the gold standard which sol 
many of his colleagues had declared impossible. Railways 
were rapidly being constructed, trade enlivened, and in- 
dustries created and protected. The problems of wages, 
housing, and hygiene were openly mooted if not practically 
dealt with, and the standard of living for that section of 
the peasants which eked out their incomes from the land 
with the wages paid at the factory was rising fast, and the 
resentment of the many who had no resources but those 
which they drew from the soil sought passionate utterance in 
vain. Literature and journalism continued to radiate sub- 
dued heat as well as light, and the conduct of the inter- 
national affairs of the nation was the stock text for the 
discreet strictures aimed at the State fabric. Publicists — I 
myself was at that time one of the fraternity — laid hold on 
every pretext and used all the skill they had acquired in the 
difficult art of writing forcibly between the lines to scatter 
the seeds of rebellion. And the seeds sank into the receptive 
minds of their readers to germinate with all the wildness 
and colour of Bakunin's ideas. In all this there was no 
attempt at limitation, at self-discipline, at what might be 
termed conservative reform. Even the oneness of the 
political organism with itself came in for no consideration — 
the centrifugal forces were fostered and strengthened, 
whenever and wherever possible, irrespective of the con- 
sequences. 

Alexander III. was a physically sane, ethically upright, 
mentally shallow-brained man who behaved well according 
to his lights, which unhappily were dim and flickering. 

1 06 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. 107 

Conscious of his mental limitations, he was honestly- 
desirous of substituting the farthest reaching intellectual 
lights he could find for his own. But he chose in the main 
so badly that the mental element in the social organism was 
as warped as the ethical. When the tidings of his illness 
were flashed over the wires one might have distinguished, 
amid the excitement and curiosity of the nation, the stir of 
expanding human life and of wide interests that had ever 
been inarticulate. 

I travelled to the Crimea to be near him, having been 
privately informed that he was seized with his last illness. 
Among my fellow-travellers in the train was the celebrated 
Father John of Cronstadt, a priest whom the irreligious 
described as a hypocritical knave and the pious revered as a 
latter-day saint. In spite of certain idiosyncrasies he had 
never separated himself from the Orthodox Church and he 
had conferred upon it the embarrassing privilege of having a 
worker of miracles in its fold. I had met him before in 
private houses, whither he had gone to pray and if possible 
to heal. He sometimes announced a cure and sometimes 
hinted at an approaching dissolution, but never laid claim 
to superhuman powers. So eagerly was he sought after that 
a female impresario arranged the order of his visits weeks in 
advance, and precedence was generally accorded to those 
who made the largest donations — for works of charity.* 
The Emperor had a lively faith in the holiness of the priest 
and invited him to the Crimea. There was, however, nothing 
mystical in the relations between the two, as there after- 
wards was between Nicholas II. and Philippe. At one of the 
railway stations the passengers left the train for their mdday 
repast when a curious ceremony attracted my attention. 
John of Cronstadt, who occupied the head of the table and 
was surrounded by GcKl-fearing ladies, took his dish of soup, 
blessed it, raised a spoonful to his lips, partook of it as 
though it were the communion, and handed the dish on to 
his neighbour. She reverently crossed herself, absorl)ed a 

* My friend LeskoflF entertained the deepest contempt for John of Cron- 
stadt and read mc a tremendous attack on him wrapped up in literary 
form. Part of it appeared later in the Messenger of Europe. 



108 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

spoonful, and passed on the vessel. When it came to a certain 
Crimean landowner who was a good acquaintance of mine,^ 
he took the plate and handed it to a fellow-passenger, but 
without tasting the contents. At this there was a loud 
murmur of indignation. 

A day or two later Father John delivered a sermon in 
Yalta to a great multitude, of which I was a unit. He said, 
'The Tsar is necessary to Russia, to Europe, to the world. 
He is the peacemaker of the human race. Therefore fear not 
that he will die. It is God's will that he should live. Be of 
good heart." After this the monarch lived ten days or a 
fortnight. I next heard the wonder-worker preach after the 
Emperor's death, also in the open air, and this is what he said : 
"God has called his illustrious servant away because you 
lacked faith. Had you believed that he would live when I 
announced it, your great Emperor would have been living and 
working among you to-day. Ye are people of little faith." 
As a matter of fact, the bulk of the people, moved though 
they undoubtedly were by the passing away of their semi- 
mythical chief, who had led as lonely a life as that of Dejoces 
the Mede, regarded the event with curiosity as to its political 
consequences rather than with genuine grief. 

A short time before his death, the Princess Alix of Hesse, 
who was about to wed his son, arrived in Yalta. The exact 
date of her disembarkment may not have been known in 
advance, it certainly was not prepared for. Taken some- 
what by surprise, and unprovided with ladies to wait on 
the princess, the court officials had the choice of various 
expedients by which to extricate themselves from the diffi- 
culty. It is characteristic of the a-morality of thought, unre- 
lieved even by a workaday sense of propriety, that of all 
issues open to them they chose or rather invented the worst. 
In a fit of coarse humour, which to many may seem to 
epitomise the court, the country, and the decadent epoch, 
Prince Y. went out into the city and invited young ladies of 
Mrs. Warren's profession to come to the palace and wait 

*His name, Blaramberg, is well known throughout Russia for he was 
also a musical composer. 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. 109 

upon the future empress until ordinary tirewomen could 
relieve them of their unwonted duties. And it was these 
courtesans who received, dressed, and waited upon the lady 
who was afterwards to exercise such a blighting influence 
upon the nation into which she was about to be adopted. I 
saw two of these improvised maids enjoying the court sweets 
they had received from Prince Y. and his friends and 
criticising the palace arrangements. Years after — in the 
spring of 1913 — meeting the prince at lunch in Petersburg, 
I reminded him of these extravagant freaks of his unregener- 
ate days, but he still took pleasure in the recollection and 
asked me questions to freshen his memory. 

Altogether, the beginnings of the public career of the 
imperial couple were marked with what superstitious 
Russians term sinister omens, like those of Richard 11. of 
England, Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette of France, and 
they were bruited abroad freely and interpreted by young 
and old from Riga to Astrakhan. 

At the outset of his reign the young Tsar, who was 
believed by some of those who knew him best to be wholly 
wanting in that fellow-feeling for others which the Buddha 
makes the groundwork of all morality, gave a striking proof 
of his inacessibility to human sorrow. Among the festivi- 
ties that marked his coronation was a popular fete in which 
a Muscovite custom of olden days was partly revived. Food 
and sweets, a pocket handkerchief and an enamelled goblet 
with the imperial arms were offered by the monarchs to all 
their subjects who should come at the time fixed. Merry-go- 
rounds, theatres, booths, various entertainments, and bands 
were provided on a generous scale. Hundreds of thousands 
of peasants, artisans, and mendicants from near and far 
flocked to the ancient capital to enjoy the national holiday. 
By nightfall on the eve the approaches were blocked to the 
vast field of Khodynka — the scene chosen by the authorities 
— and for miles the pressure of the throng was tremendous. 
In singing, shouting, jesting, and horseplay the ccx)l May 
night was spent. At first waggon after waggon laden witli 
food passed through the dense gathering, provoking screams. 



110 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



■ 



yells, and hurrahs, the people surging and jostling each other 
in order to make way ; now and again a Cossack or a gendarme 
came dashing along on horseback frightening, maiming, or 
killing some of the weary watchers, for the crowd grew 
denser and more compact as night wore into morning. By 
sunrise the pressure at the entrances was become formidable, 
but the gendarmes and Cossacks contrived to keep back the 
people until the early afternoon when the imperial couple 
took their places on the stand. The military band struck up 
the National Anthem and selections from the well-known 
opera. Life for the Tsar. While half a million voices 
acclaimed the young autocrat of Holy Russia and his con- 
sort the police threw open the entrances which were 
arranged to admit at the turnstiles one person after another. 
But the swaying and surging human sea swept away some 
of the barriers and burst into the enclosure, wave dashing 
against wave, breaking into bloody froth and foam, amid soul- 
searing shrieks, agonising cries, and the joyous strains of the 
military music. Soon the ground was strewn with several 
thousand mangled corpses. A battlefield it seemed to the 
elder officers, a pandemonium to the masses. The number 
of persons killed, crushed, trampled, smothered, never 
accurately ascertained, was variously estimated at three, 
five, seven thousand.^ I was requested by the censor either 
to abstain from commenting on the "deplorable incident'* 
or else to paraphrase the official account without additions. 
I did neither. 

The Tsar was severely blamed in secret for allowing the 
festivities to continue in face of this disaster. But he seemed 
incapable of realising the depth and force of public opinion 
otherwise than by notional assent. Anyhow, the next day ^ 
he entertained 432 guests to dinner, and the day after the 
Grand Duke Sergius gave a gorgeous entertainment, which 
was followed on the 21st by the ball of the nobles and then 
by a dinner offered by the British ambassador, and so on 

*The number has never been correctly announced. I was told at the 
time by the Moscow authorities — I was present at all the festivities — that 
it was a little over four thousand. 

'19th May. 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. Ill 

till the end of the programme. It is affirmed, on good 
authority, that when the review took place, exactly a week 
after this terrible mishap and on the same field, and the 
"quality'' foregathered for pigeon shooting, royalties, 
grand dukes, princes native and foreign, luminaries of 
diplomacy, and gallant warriors who had come to amuse 
themselves were pained and angered to note that the dead 
were still lying side by side along the barricades or were 
being carted away to improvised graves, and the odour 
emitted by the corpses could hardly be supported. As for the 
inarticulate masses, they went their own way, drawing from 
their stores of superstitious lore the standards by which to 
interpret these untoward occurrences. The heavy loss of 
human life they construed as an evil omen presaging a 
terrible end to a reign that had such a sinister beginning, and 
the shooting of the pigeons a week later imparted to what 
after all might have been but a mere accident the character 
of a deliberately malignant crime. For few Russians have 
the heart and fewer still the sacrilegious daring to harm 
pigeons, many regarding them as sacred birds, while some 
have a vague belief that they are the souls of erring Christians. 
On this very occasion I heard two mooshiks and their women 
folk debate the whole subject with animation and pathos on 
lines recognised by the bulk of the nation, and one of them 
closed the discussion with this sweeping dictum : "Say 
what you like, those heathen devils slew their bodies last 
week and are trying to kill their souls to-day. The devils !" 

To the diplomatic representative of one of the great 
powers the Tsar in the course of conversation mentioned 
the matter casually, but with an expression of regret, where- 
upon the ambassador, assuming that Nicholas II. was deeply 
moved by the disaster and might be tranquillised by his- 
torical comparisons, assured his imperial interlocutor that 
accidents of this painful nature are almost unavoidable at 
such national festivities especially if popular enthusiasm and 
loyalty are exceptionally fervid and run wild. "It was just 
the same," he blandly remarked, "during the festivities 
that accompanied the crowning of Louis XVT. Your Majesty 



112 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

may remember the details. And as you know, the contretemps 
was soon forgotten. The population idolised the young 
monarch, their joy was excessive, and in manifesting it a 
number of loyal people lost their lives. No importance 
attaches to such happenings. They are cloudlets that vanish 
almost before they are perceived. Who to-day even among 
historians dwells for a moment on that regrettable accident? 
Altogether there is a great resemblance between the open- 
ing days of Louis' reign and those of Nicholas II. In 
fact, ..." but Nicholas II. cut him short. 

In the salons of the day, particularly in that of the accom- 
plished Countess Levashoff, the solace offered by this Job's 
comforter was as much the subject of caustic comment as 
the shortsightedness of the authorities who were responsible 
for the accident that had elicited it. The countess, who knew 
the youthful Tsar intimately and saw him at close quarters 
during those strenuous days when amusement was become 
an irksome task, told me at the time that so far as she could 
judge he was more concerned about the effect which the 
narrative would have upon others than about the misery 
caused to the families of his ill-starred subjects. 

The reign of Nicholas II. is largely the resultant of the 
clashing of two forces: one which had its origin in the new 
spirit of the age and was to some extent represented by 
Witte, who stood for steady progress of every kind com- 
patible with the political system; and the other emanating 
from the historic past and personified by the men behind 
the Tsar, whose paltry expedients generally proceeded from 
bottomless ignorance and were often divorced from judg- 
ment and patriotism. Witte was a commanding spirit who 
made himself for a time — 

"what Nature destined him, 
The pause, the central point of thousand thousands." 

He fascinated those who knew him intimately, and he fasci- 
nated them by his typically Russian qualities and defects, 
the fellow-feeling, the ready pity for suffering, the humane 
equalising touch, the union of contrasts, the suddenness with 
which his moods, and sometimes even his opinions, alter- 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. 113 

nated, touching one extreme at this moment and its opposite 
at the next. But he attracted and commanded still more 
through the medium of judgment by his lucidity of vision, 
by his capacity of surveying a subject all round, not only in 
the smallest details of its internal properties, but also in its 
external bearings. Above all he impressed those who had 
to do with him by a permanent substratum of tendency 
amid all the changes, by the existence of certain fixed points, 
by currents set in one and the same direction. He could be 
relied upon within certain definable limits. For instance, his 
striving to safeguard peace was a factor that never changed. 
This limited constancy is a trait he may have inherited from 
his Dutch ancestors. 

Witte long had the feeling that the social and political 
molecules of which the Tsardom was composed, and which 
were ever forming and re-forming themselves into fleeting 
shapes, might be attracted and held permanently together by 
the central force of a grandiose economic transformation 
and the interests which that would create and foster, 
seconded by educational influences properly systematised. 
The resolution taken early in his ministerial career to effect 
this transfiguration offers a clue to his policy. He was one 
of the few originating statesmen ever possessed by Russia, 
and since Peter's day he was unquestionably the greatest. 

From the first he was disliked by the shy, secretive, polished 
young man who, having inherited together with die Empire 
the administration appointed by his father, was willing to 
follow his mother's advice and retain it. But Nicholas H. 
could not for long hit it off with Witte, who when they dis- 
agreed upon really momentous issues was as unyielding as 
the granite. The minister's defects, it must l^e admitted, were 
exactly of the kind that must chafe and rufH^e a man like the 
Tsar. When discussing a question that moved him, for 
example, the minister would sometimes allow emphasis to 
degenerate into vehemence, reinforce his arguments with 
resonant blows of his fist on the table, and raise his voice till 
it could be heard in the adjoining room — tactics that a man 
of the Emperor's temperament could not brook. 



114 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

While it would be a gross exaggeration to saddle 
Nicholas II. with the sole responsibility for the dissolution 
of the regime and the ruin of Russia, it is fair to say that 
no man contributed so materially to bring them about as this 
shallow, weak-willed, shifty creature. It was impossible to 
trust him either to redeem his word, to stand by the minister 
who acted on it, or even to refrain from intriguing against 
his own responsible agents for the purpose of undoing the 
work which he and they had undertaken and achieved con- 
jointly. In affairs of State, as in private life, faithlessness was 
the trait that vitiated his best actions and aggravated his 
worst. As the crowned head of a parliamentary state like 
Belgium or Italy, Nicholas II. might have had his defects 
neutralised. But alone to preside over the destinies of a 
mighty Empire was impossible without revealing the fact 
that he was among the least fitted men in his dominions. 
What made matters worse was his complete unconsciousness 
of his unfitness. That it was which engendered the danger 
that always hung over Russia at home and over Russia's 
peaceful neighbours abroad. Deep-rooted faith in his own 
ability, which increased immeasurably towards the close of 
his reign, prompted him to shun the very few men whose 
statesmanship might have shielded his people from the worst 
consequences of his faults and moved him to choose officials 
or rank outsiders whose only qualification was their willing- 
ness to serve as passive tools in his unsteady hands. Con- 
sequently his selection of ministers and of favourites — for he 
employed them both — was deplorable. 

And yet in spite of the scandalous way in which the 
country was misruled, Nicholas II. long escaped the harsh 
criticisms of which his father from the outset of his reign 
had been the butt. During the first ten years of his life a 
most flattering portrait of him was current in the non- 
Russian world. He was depicted as a prince of peace, a Slav 
Messiah sent for the salvation, not of his own people only, 
but of the whole human race. Passionate love of humanity 
and selfless devotion to the good and the true were among 
the qualities universally predicated of him, And so deep 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS 11. 115 

rooted was this conviction throughout Europe and America 
that when I pubHshed my portrait of the Tsar in the 
Quarterly Review ^ — for which a Russian official of rank 
privately accepted responsibility in order to safeguard an 
eminent statesman and myself — it provoked an outburst of 
righteous wrath among respectable people of all classes of 
the population of Britain, but more especially among 
nationahsts and conservatives there. It was set down as a 
gross caricature, untruthful, and politically mischievous. 

When he ascended the throne Nicholas II. was still his 
mother's darling, passivity his predominant mental feature, 
and diffidence one of its transient symptoms. That phase 
of his career, however, was brief and the change from the 
chrysalis to the butterfly rapid. At the first audience he 
accorded the Council of the Empire, which met to do him 
homage, he exhibited his early manner. The assembly was 
composed of venerable dignitaries of the Empire, their 
bodies embellished with gorgeous uniforms and their faces 
wreathed in courtly smiles. They were eager to behold the 
imperial majesty that hedgeth kings encircling him whose 
father and grandfather many of them had served. What 
they actually observed was childish constraint, a shambling 
gait, a furtive glance, and spasmodic movements. An under- 
sized, pithless lad sidled into the apartment in which these 
hoary dignitaries were respectfully awaiting him. With 
downcast eyes and in a shrill falsetto voice he hastily 
blurted out a single sentence, "Gentlemen, in the name of 
my late father I thank you for your services," hesitated for a 
second, and then turning on his heels was gone. They looked 
at each other, some in amazement, many uttering a mental 
prayer for the weal of the country; and after an awkward 
pause, dispersed to their homes. 

The nation's next vicarious meeting with the Tsar took 
place a few days later upon an occasion as solemn as the 
first; but in the interval he had been hypnotised by M. 
Pobiedonostseff, the lay-bishop of autocracy, who had the 
secret of spiritually anointing and intellectually equipping 
the chosen of the Lord. The keynote of the Emperor's 
*July, 1904. I continued the article in tiic National Review. 



116 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



1 

h hei' 



second appearance was haughtiness, the nearest approach 
could make to dignity. All Russia had then gathered together 
in the persons of the representatives of the zemstvos — ^we 
may call them embryonic county councils — to do homage to 
his Majesty on his accession to the throne. Loyal addresses 
without number, some drawn up in the flowery language of 
oriental obsequiousness, others plain spoken and ominous, 
had been presented from all those institutions. One of 
these documents — and only one — had seemed to M. Pobie- 
donostseff to smack of liberalism. No less loyal in form 
or spirit than those of the other boards, the address drawn 
up by the council of Tver vaguely expressed the modest 
hope that his Majesty's confidence might not be wholly 
restricted to the bureaucracy, but would likewise be extended 
to the Russian people and to the zemstvos, whose devotion 
to the throne was proverbial. This was a reasonable wish; 
it could not seriously be dubbed a crime; and even if it 
bespoke a certain spirit of mild independence, it was after 
all the act of a single zemstvo, whereas the men who had 
come to do homage to the Emperor were the spokesmen, not 
of one zemstvo, but of all Russia. Yet the autocrat strutted 
pompously into the brilliantly lighted hall, and with knitted 
brows and tightly drawn lips turned wrath fully upon the 
chosen men of the nation, and stamping his little foot 
ordered them to put away such chimerical notions which 
he would never entertain. 

Between those two public appearances of Nicholas II. lay 
that short period of suggestion during which the impression- 
able youth had been made not so much to believe as to feel 
that he was God's lieutenant, the earthly counterpart of his 
divine master. From that time forward he was filled with 
a spirit of self-exaltation which went on gaining strength 
in accordance with the psychological law that pride usurps 
as much space as servility is ready to yield. Nikolai Alex- 
androvitch soon began to look upon himself as the centre of 
the world, the peacemaker of mankind, the torch-bearer of 
civilisation among the "yellow" and other ''barbarous" 
races, and the dispenser of almost every blessing to his own 
happy people. Taking seriously this his imaginary mission. 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. 117 

he meddled continuously and directly in many affairs of 
State, domestic and foreign, unwittingly thwarting the 
course of justice, undermining legality, impoverishing his 
subjects, boasting his fervent love of peace and plunging his 
tax-burdened people into the horrors of sanguinary and 
needless wars. 

The dowager empress kept her imperial son in leading 
strings for a considerable time after the death of her consort 
and seconded the efforts of Pobiedonostseff to impress upon 
him the necessity of following in the footsteps of his "never- 
to-be-forgotten father." That phrase often and piously 
reiterated came to possess a sacramental virtue which he 
could not resist, and it is a pathological fact that he strove 
earnestly to copy Alexander III. until at last he believed he 
had succeeded. In truth the two men were as far asunder in 
moral character as in physique. Alexander, sincere, gloomy, 
mistrustful, and narrow-minded, felt his limitations and never 
ventured out beyond his depth. And he endeavoured 
honestly to secure the services of the best men among those 
who entered his narrow circle of acquaintances. Moreover, 
when he had chosen an adviser, he stuck to him, asked his 
advice, and never rejected it without good reason. Lastly, 
anything that smacked of perfidy, of disloyalty, of guile, 
was an abomination in his sight and he never forgave the 
guilty one. His word was better than a bond. And yet it 
is a curious characteristic of the country and the people that 
even he with his uprightness and probity violated the 
covenant of his house with Finland and broke his own 
promise in regard to Batoum. But Nicholas II. was the 
opposite to his father. Unsteady, self-complacent, callous, 
fickle, and polished, he changed his favourites and his prin- 
ciples with his fitful moods, lacked moral courage, intrigued 
against his chosen counsellors, mistook his own interests for 
those of the nation, and imagined himself the autocrat of a 
hundred and eighty millions. 

In the year 1904 I was struck with his predilection for ad- 
venturers of the Cagliostro type, and I expressed regret that 
be should alknv "a band of casual, obscure, and dangerous 
men to usurp the functions of his responsible ministers whose 



118 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

recommendations are ignored and whose warnings are dis- 
regarded. . . . Every candidate for imperial favour whom 
the grand dukes present is a specialist who promises to 
realise the momentary desires of the Tsar. Thus M. 
Philippe, the spiritualist who appeared during the Emperor's 
illness in Yalta, promised him a son and heir and was there- 
fore received with open arms. As time passed and the hopes 
which the adventurer raised were not fulfilled, the canoni- 
sation of St. Seraphim was suggested by a pious grand duke 
and a sceptical abbot because among the feats said to have 
been achieved by this holy man was the miraculous bestowal 
of children upon barren women." ^ 

After the assassination of his second favourite, Sipyaghin, 
his choice fell upon Plehve for the post of Minister of the 
Interior. Plehve was the official whose self-possession on 
the assassination of Alexander II. had strongly impressed 
all who witnessed it. This man, probably the cleverest of 
all who were within the Emperor's reach, became virtual 
dictator of the Empire and one of the most efficient instru- 
ments of fate for pushing the autocracy into the abyss. 
Well-informed, conversant with the seamy side of human 
nature, cool-headed, and calculating, Plehve knew how to 
touch the right chords of sentiment, prejudice, or passion 
when moving large bodies of men, and could keep his head 
in the most alarming crisis. He was one of those successful 
bureaucrats whom it would be impossible to classify by 
nationality, genealogy, church, or even party. Of obscure 
parentage, of German blood with a Jewish strain, of un- 
certain religious denomination, his ethical worth had 
been weighed and found wanting by his own easy-going 
colleagues long before. 

Soon after he had entered on the duties of his new office, a 
number of peasants of the Ukraine provinces of Kharkoff 
and Poltava showed signs of discontent with their miserable 
condition. Although spontaneous and local, the outburst 
was dealt with severely and the peasants flogged by the 
provincial authorities without instructions from the capital. 
Plehve visited the disaffected places, promptly rewarded 
* Quarterly Review, July, 1904. 



THE ADVENT OF NICHOLAS II. 119 

the Governor of Kharkoff for having the malcontents flogged 
at once/ and punished the Governor of Poltava for having 
them flogged only as an afterthought. The minister soon 
became the most powerful official in the Empire, a sort of 
grand vizier whose power was unlimited, but was held at the 
pleasure of an absolute and changeful master. He applied 
in the spirit of German method the principles propounded 
by Pobiedonostseff, and among the concrete results were 
pogroms of the Jews, the spoliation of Armenians, the per- 
secution of Poles and Ruthenians, the exile of liberal-minded 
nobles, the flogging of peasants, the reorganisation of espion- 
age with the notorious Azeff as its moving spirit. 

These and other men turned the Tsar's head by their end- 
less panegyrics. They invented for him a lofty mission and 
feigned to admire the masterly way in which he was fulfil- 
ling it. Being the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, and 
therefore a Christian, he could not be deified without blas- 
phemy, but between humanity and divinity he became a 
tertium quid. And they venerated him accordingly, anticipat- 
ing his wishes, and colouring facts to suit his fancies, for 
while he could appreciate effects his faculty of discerning 
their relations to causes was almost atrophied. He operated 
with phantoms, fought against windmills, conversed with 
saints, and consulted the dead. He employed the vast power 
of which he was the repository to grind down over a hundred 
million men at home in order to obtain the means of killing 
or wounding hundreds of thousands abroad. Of the psy- 
chology of foreign nations and of his own he lacked rudi- 
mentary knowledge, and international politics was a region 
of darkness in which he groped his way to ruin. When Witte 
and two other ministers besought him to redeem his pledge, 
evacuate Manchuria and save the land from the horrors of 
war, he returned this answer : *T will keep peace and my own 
counsel as well." To one of the grand dukes who, on the 
day before the rupture with Japan, hinted at the possibility 
of war, the Emperor said : ''Leave that to me. Japan will 
never fight. My reign will be an era of peace throughout." 

* Prince Obolensky, the governor, received a star from the Emperor for 
his enerpy. Some of the peasants he had flogged are said to have died in 

consequence of their punishment. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Rule of Nicholas II. 

There never was a trustworthy intermediary between the 
isolated sovereign and his restive people. Many individuals 
there were whom he received and questioned from time to 
time, some of whom spoke with a directness, sincerity, and 
knowledge worthy of an ancient Hebrew prophet, but the 
message they delivered was not only resented and disre- 
garded by the Tsar, but was also contradicted and neutralised 
by equally impressive statements volunteered by interested 
politicians or misinformed patriots. And Nicholas II., even 
if he had felt the desire, lacked the means of sifting the true 
from the false. The upshot was a gulf between the autoc- 
racy and the people nearly as broad and deep as that which 
sundered the Dalai Lama from his pious worshippers. An 
anecdote which, devoid of foundation in fact, is superlatively 
true as a presentment of the paralysis of volition from which 
he suffered, was current long before I ventured upon 
sketching his portrait in the Quarterly and National Reviews. 

One day, the story ran, a nobleman of great experience 
and progressive tendencies was received in audience by the 
Tsar. He made the most of his opportunity, and laid before 
his sovereign the wretched state of the peasantry, the general 
unrest it was occasioning, and the urgent necessity of re- 
moving its proximate causes by modifying the political 
machinery of government. During this unwelcome expose 
the Emperor, whose urbanity and polish left nothing to be 
desired, nodded from time to time approvingly and repeated 
often, *'I know. Yes, yes. You are right. Quite right." The 
nobleman when retiring felt morally certain that the mon- 
arch was at one with him on the subject. Immediately after- 
wards a great landowner, also a member of the nobility, was 
ushered in, who unfolded a very different tale. According 
to this authority things on the whole were progressing satii 
factorily, the only drawback being the weakness and indul 

1 20 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS 11. 121 

gence of the authorities. ''What is needed, sire, is an iron 
hand. The peasants must be kept in their place by force, 
otherwise they will usurp ours. To make way for them and 
treat them as though they were the masters of the country 
is a crime." During this discourse also Nicholas II. was 
attentive and appreciative, nodding and uttering the stereo- 
typed phrases, **Yes, I know. You are right. Quite right." 
And the conservative, like the liberal, departed happy. 

Then a side door opened and the empress entered look- 
ing grave. **You really must not go on like this, Niki," she 
exclaimed. 'Tt is not dignified. Remember you are an 
autocrat who should possess a will strong enough to stiffen 
a nation of a hundred and fifty millions." ''But what is it 
that you find fault with, darling?" "Your want of resolu- 
tion and of courage to express it. I have been listening to the 
conversations you have just had. Count X. whom you first 
received pleaded the cause of the disaffected. You assented 
to everything he advanced, telling him he was right, quite 
right. Then M. Y. was introduced who gave you an account 
of things as they really are, and you agreed with him in just 
the same way, saying, 'You are right. Quite right.' Well 
now, that attitude does not befit an autocrat. You must 
learn to have a will of your own and assert it." "You are 
right, dear, quite right," was the answer. 

Friends and acquaintances of mine, men of various walks 
in life and divergent ways of thought, who had an oppor- 
tunity of observing him, all missed in his nature diffusive 
sympathy with the sorrows and joys of men and women 
and the faculty of concentrating his intellect or his will on 
any object but that towards which his whole being was 
orientated. "I informed him of the lamentable state of the 
district," one of them said to me, "and drew a harrowing 
picture of men and women steeped in misery, racked with 
pain, but he only answered, 'Yes, I know, I know,* and 
bowed me out." Those words, "Yes, I know, I know," have 
figured as the finis uttered by the Tsar at the close of 
History's Chapters on the iMunish Constitution, the 
Armenian Church and schools, the nationality of the Poles, 



122 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the Liberty of Conscience denied to his own people. "I 
know, I know!" If only he had realised what he claimed to 
know he might still be on the throne. Men, like trees, fall on 
their leaning side, and in the Tsar's case the leaning side was 
not an inclination to assuage human suffering, otherwise there 
would have been less misery during the great famine and far 
less bloodshed during his ill-starred reign. The unaffectedly 
heartless way in which he spoke of the awful catastrophe 
during his coronation, of the agonies of his people at the 
time of the famine and during the Manchurian campaign, 
and of the abortive revolution that followed it, seemed to 
indicate that he is deficient in the sensibility which charac- 
terises the average human being. A certain polish of kindli- 
ness marked his casual intercourse with people, but it is to 
be feared that it resembled the glitter of the gilt cross on the 
mouldering coffin. 

And yet in his family relations he displayed qualities that 
would have done credit to any private citizen. He was an 
uncommonly dutiful son who interpreted filial respect as 
generously as the followers of Confucius, having in the 
early days of his reign frequently submitted not his will only 
but also his judgment to that of his august mother. A model 
husband, he left little undone to ensure the happiness of his 
imperial consort. A tender father, he literally adored his 
children with almost maternal fervour, and often magnani- 
mously deprived himself of the keen pleasure which the dis- 
charge of the clerical duties of kingship confers in order to 
watch over his darling little grand duke and grand duchesses 
and to see that sunshine brightened their lives. What, for 
instance, could be more touching than the picture — which 
courtiers used to draw — of the dread autocrat of all the Rus- 
sias anxiously superintending the details of the bathing of 
his little son, the Grand Duke Alexis, at the height of the 
diplomatic storm raised by the North Sea incident? What 
could be more idyllic than the pretty human weakness 
betokened by the joyful exclamation with which the great 
potentate suddenly interrupted Admiral Roshdjestvensky, 
who was making a report on the Baltic Squadron, **But are 



I 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS IL 123 

you aware that he weighs 14 lb.?" "Who, your Majesty?" 
asked the admiral, his mind still entangled in questions of 
displacement, quick-firing guns, and other kindred matters. 
"The heir to the throne," answered the happy father. 
Touches of nature like this offer a refreshing contrast to the 
Byzantine stiffness of the autocrat bending over his table and 
writing marginal glosses. 

Nicholas II. was a man of destiny in the fullest sense of the 
word. Few monarchs known to history did more to transform 
the entire structure, political and economic, of society than 
he by pushing the conceptions underlying Tsarism to their 
extreme consequences. This, it must be added, was due 
largely to the circumstance that the reactions provoked by 
his qualities and defects among the revolutionists harmonised 
admirably with the diseased condition of the body politic. 
All the new solvent ideas fell upon grateful soil. His weak- 
ness of will contrasted painfully with his craving for strength 
and his endeavours to feign its attainment. Incapable of 
perseverance in personal conduct or of system in public 
policy, he was uncommonly obstinate in little things. 
Gradually, too, he lost much of the power of voluntary 
attention in which at the outset he had been nowise deficient. 
"Emotions which move the normal man profoundly touch 
him but lightly, and for a brief while, so that fitfulness is his 
substitute for steadiness, impulse for will, mood for strength 
of character. He thinks with the ideas of others, acts at their 
instigation or else by impulse, and likes them less for their 
qualities than for their manifest disposition towards himself. 
It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to affirm that he is con- 
stant only in his inconstancy." Thus I wrote of him as long 
ago as May, 1905. "That ailment was aggravated by in- 
judicious but well-meant efforts to cure it. A soft feminine 
voice, uttering loving words and bracing exhortations in the 
language of Shakespeare, stimulated him to endeavours 
which took a wrong direction. Had he possessed average 
intelligence even a Russian Agnes Sorel might, perhaps, 
have helped him to co-ordinate the scattered elements of 
volition and get him credit for political wisdom; without it 



124 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

a Deianira could but operate with that Fate which she fondly 
fancies she is out-manoeuvring." ^ 

Like so many statesmen of the end of the nineteenth and 
beginning of the twentieth centuries, Nicholas II. appeared 
to be cause-blind. He failed to realise the nature of the nexus 
between cause and effect. The law of causality entering his 
mind was seemingly always refracted like a sunbeam striking 
the surface of the water. It changed its direction. It was in 
consequence of that defect that, while moving every lever 
to produce war, he was purblind to the approach of the 
conflict and deaf to the warnings of those who could see. 
The dispute with Japan was originally caused by his personal 
act of seizing his neighbour's property and believing he 
could placate the despoiled people by crying, "No offence 
intended !" Well-meaning at bottom, but logic-proof and 
mystical, he instinctively followed the example of the vampire 
which fans its victims while sucking their life blood. Under 
his j)redecessors Russia had grown and "thriven" in this 
way, and why should she not continue to grow in like 
manner under him? It was the old spirit of the predatory 
Tsarist State revived and embodied for the last time. So 
overweening was his confidence in his own prophetic vision 
that he was impervious to the arguments of the wisest of his 
responsible advisers, and risked the welfare of his subjects 
on the slender chance of his being a Moses to his people. 
And he resisted his ministers, not with the harmless swagger 
of a vainglorious youth, but with the calm settled presump- 
tion which medical psychologists describe as incurable. Like 
those Chinese Boxers who, believing their lives were charmed, 
smilingly stood up to the bullets of the Europeans, so 
Nicholas 11. cheerfully exposed, not himself or his imperial 
house, but his people to a disaster which his second sight 
assured him could never come. For he started with a curious 
view of the autocracy. He firmly held that according to 
God's will he, the unique absolute ruler of modern times, 
should be at once the arbiter of peace and war throughout 
the globe and the keeper of the lives, the property, and the 
^Cf. National Review, May, 1905. 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS IL 125 

souls of his people at home. And he acted up to this belief, 
which marked an advance on that of Ivan the Terrible and 
Peter the Great. Thus he took it for granted that as no 
foreign power would dare to attack Russia, peace depended 
on whether he would attack any foreign power. And as he 
was resolved not to declare war, he reasoned that peace was 
therefore secure during his lifetime. One difference between 
him and the Boxer is, that the Boxer risked only his own life, 
whereas Nicholas IL risked and lost those of hundreds of 
thousands of his people. And even a capable autocrat, were 
he never so wise, ought not to be invested with such tremen- 
dous power. The chasms between Russia and progress, 
between the peasantry and well-being, between the Empire 
and peace he never bridged nor attempted to bridge, but 
contented himself with a pious hope, a shadowy velleity, a 
vague irrational impulse. At bottom, however, the concep- 
tion of the State entertained by Nicholas II. was the logical 
development of that of the founders of the Tsardom. 

Over against him stood Witte, who was for long the 
power that bent every force, public and private, to collective 
ends and overthrew every obstacle in his way. He humoured 
the Tsar and his family only in secondary matters, and not 
always in these, but his manner, which he was incapable of 
adjusting to court exigencies, was resented by the Emperor 
and loathed by his consort. One of the characteristics of the 
imperial lady was a fatal predisposition to assimilate and 
exaggerate the likes and dislikes of the person she loved and 
to push them to extreme and sometimes perilous conse- 
quences. It was in virtue of this bias that she grew more 
orthodox than the Metropolitan Archbishop and more auto- 
cratic than her husband. To her religion was policy and 
autocracy was religion. She could not bear to miss the out- 
ward pomp and circumstance of either, and Witte's presence 
was comparable to that of the skeleton at the banquet. 

For a long time the Emperor was assisted in the govern- 
ment by what I termed at the time a "boudoir council" 
consisting of his imperial consort, a number of grand dukes, 
a spiritist or two, and the favourite man of the moment. 



126 TKE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Under Alexander III. the other members of the imperial 
family had been kept in their places. Nicholas 11. allowed 
them a wide scope of activity, political, military, and com- 
mercial. Colouring their plans in the hues of his own dreams, 
presenting him with motives that appealed to his prejudices, 
they exerted an influence over him that was pernicious. Nor, 
until the disappearance of the minister Plehve, which 
created a void around him, did they ever seriously exert 
themselves to change his suicidal course. The Grand Duke 
Sergius, the governor-general of Moscow,^ who was for a 
long while the Tsar's expert on religious matters, once pro- 
posed to abolish the Juridical Society of Moscow for its lib- 
eral tendencies, and when it was objected that its members 
were scrupulously observant of the laws, he answered, 'That's 
exactly my point — they are for that very reason all the more 
dangerous to the State." 

When Russia's unique statesman was dismissed, the Tsar 
hearkened to the soft voice from the boudoir. "Show them 
that you are a real monarch whose word is law. You have 
issued your commands, now see that they are executed. 
They taunt you with a weak will. Let them feel its force!" 
And Nicholas responded to the stimulus. For if he lacked 
the sensitive conscience which wakes the sinner up, he 
possessed certain of the virtues which lull to sleep, and 
foremost among them that languid sweetness which enables 
a husband to spend his life as though it were an endless 
honeymoon. And it is possibly to the qualities underlying 
this soft passivity — which the son of Priam combined with 
personal dash — that Nicholas owed his predilection for the 
society of women, priests, charlatans, and children, and his 
shyness of the society of strong honest men. Whenever these 
conflicting influences clashed, the results were unedifying. 

One day a strike of students, professors, and public-school 
boys was declared against the prevalent educational system. 
The dowager empress on learning what had happened 
*I was first introduced to him by Princess (Lison) Trubetskoy, the 
friend of Gambetta. He offered me a high Russian order for the services 
I was supposed to have rendered to Orthodoxy as personified by the 
MetropoHtan Archbishop. That was in the days of Alexander III. 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II. 127 

counselled forbearance. But the boudoir council decided to 
have recourse to coercion. The minister sounded the rectors 
and deans, who told him that force would only do harm. But 
the inspiriting voices insisted, "Show them that you are a 
real monarch. People say you have no will. Let them feel 
its force. . . . Have you forgotten your motto, 'Are you 
anvil? Be enduring. Are you hammer ? Smite with might' ?" 
Then the autocrat bade his ministers use sternness and 
repression. "Expel the rebellious students; dismiss the 
mutinous professors; close the high schools; stop the 
salaries." And the behest was executed. Witte, as President 
of the Committee of Ministers, then recorded his opinion 
in writing to the effect that, as force is no argument, the 
authorities should be chary of using it. If the proposed 
measures were carried out, all Russia would be moved to its 
depths. Let the government, therefore, publicly sanction 
and adopt the professors' views. The advice was frank, 
forcible, timely. The Tsar read it and bridled up at the very 
first words. "It is a piece of bare-faced impudence,'* he 
exclaimed, "to commit such views to paper." And before 
the angry flash had gone from his cheeks, he had the whole 
question transferred from the competence of the Committee 
of Ministers over which Witte presided to the Council of 
the Ministers of which he made Count Solsky vice-president 
under himself. Events, however, showed that the minister 
was right and the boudoir council wrong. The students 
finally scored a brilliant victory and the monarch suffered 
an ignominious defeat. 

In February, 1905, an unprecedented thing took place. 
The nation, expecting a ukase to supplement and enlarge 
that of the preceding December which had disillusioned all 
classes, was astonished to read a manifesto which ran 
counter to their anticipations and announced the vigorous 
continuation of the war. The ministers were indignant. 
Witte told me that morning that he could not believe it was 
the work of the Tsar, and before we separated I learned that 
it had been inspired by the Tsaritsa and drafted by Prince 
Putyatin and Shirinsky-Shikhmatoff — in a word, it was 




128 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

a pronouncement of the boudoir cabinet which the Emperor 
had been prevailed upon to sign. 

According to the fundamental laws of the Empire, never 
departed from since the eighteenth century, no imperial mani- 
festo could be promulgated without the foreknowledge of 
the Senate. But this document was sent late at night to the 
official journal, the editor of which refused to publish it be- 
cause it had not been laid before the Senate. He was bidden, 
however, to swallow his scruples and publish the manifesto. 
A few days later he was publicly reprimanded and privately 
thanked for having disobeyed the law. 

The manifesto made short work of the Russian peoples' 
hopes at home and abroad. It announced that the principal 
war-aim of the Emperor was control of the Pacific, and it 
identified the liberty-loving people with the "evil-minded 
ringleaders of the revolutionary movement." Witte could 
hardly restrain himself that morning. When explaining to 
me the heinousness of the act he shouted and struck the 
table, vowed that he would vindicate the law and either have 
that manifesto withdrawn or else himself withdraw from 
public life. He then hurried to the railway station together 
with the other members of the Council of Ministers and 
before they had reached Tsarskoye Selo he had laid a plan 
for the realisation of his object.^ He succeeded in check- 
mating the Tsar and obtaining the rescript he wanted. The 
Emperor, who had worded it insidiously in the belief that the 
ministers would quarrel over it, but was disappointed through 
Witte's tactics, signed it most reluctantly. "Never in my 
life," one of them afterwards remarked, "even were I to live 
a century, shall I forget that remarkable scene. It burned 
itself in my memory; the sudden freezing of the features of 
the Tsar, the convulsive quivering of the lips, the sickly smile 
alternating with the frown, and then his last look when he 
handed back the paper, and, as our peasants put it, *with his 
eyes showed his teeth.* " 

Thenceforth, a representative assembly was the only 

solution to the State pjoblems that had arisen. Witte had 

'The story was related in detail in my article "The End of the Au- 
tocracy," National Review, May, 1905. 



I 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II. 129 

all along warned the Tsar frankly that unless certain con- 
cessions were made in time representative government would 
become a necessity; and that the representative principle, 
once officially recognised, the break up of the autocracy would 
follow as a matter of course. His advice was rejected, his 
prediction had come true, and on this occasion he deliber- 
ately voted for the representative principle. And when a 
colleague, in presence of the Tsar, remarked, **But, accord- 
ing to you, this move is incompatible with autocracy?" he 
answered, "Yes, I know it is, but it cannot be withheld any 
longer." What his Majesty thought on hearing these words 
was not recorded, but what he did will not soon be forgotten 
by those who witnessed it. That rescript, courtiers openly 
asserted, was the result of a ministerial revolt, a modern 
and humane substitute for a palace revolution. The Emperor 
presumably took this view, for he never convoked the council 
again. 

That same Friday evening the document was printed and 
published and people who, having read the reactionary 
manifesto in the morning perused the liberal rescript in 
the evening, asked themselves whether the Empire was 
governed, like the Manicha^an world, by a good principle 
and a bad. For it was now manifest that Nicholas II. was 
the nominal chief of two bodies moving in diametrically 
opposite directions : of the Council of Ministers in an outer 
chamber and of the boudoir council in an inner chamber; 
and that within the space of twenty-four hours he had first 
sanctioned the views of the one and then assented to the 
plans of the other. What was to be the outcome of it all? 

From that moment onwards the autocrat struggled to 
free himself from the meshes of the net. Whether he felt 
humiliated by the successful strategy of his ministers, or was 
stimulated by the maxims of the boudoir council, is im- 
material; important is the fact that he repented having 
signed the rescript and resolved to undo as far as possible 
what he had been constrained to do. 

Thus the Emperor continually employed the govern- 
mental machine in such a way that the centrifugal tendencies 



130 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

were fast snapping the links that kept class joined with class 
and nationality with nationality. The liberty-loving elements 
of the Tsardom were struck with the unsteadiness and 
irresolution of the government and the weakness of the State, 
and were heartened thereby to more vigorous efforts. 

The Emperor's inability to govern might, perhaps, have 
passed unnoticed if he had allowed any man of intellect and 
will-power in his stead to grapple with the jarring elements. 
This, however, he refused to permit, while allotting to 
obscure soldiers and seamen, tricksters and money grabbers, 
an ever larger share of the supreme power to the detriment 
of the nation. The mental and moral impotency of this well- 
intentioned marplot, who cannot be said to have had even 
experience, despite ten years of uniform failure, became 
one of the commonplaces of conversation in town and 
country. Even the rough-and-ready droshky drivers said of 
him that he had been thrust among rulers like a pestle among 
spoons. Yet, apprised of his impotence by the boudoir 
council, he wished to will and act, and took velleity for the 
deed. No occurrence, no event, made a lasting impression 
on his mind. Abroad Russia's armies might be scattered, her 
ships sunk, her credit ruined; the Tsar was serene in spite of 
it all. At home the whole framework of society might be 
going to pieces, Nicholas sat still and fondly annotated 
State papers, a very Narcissus of the inkpot. In the Tsardom, 
whenever the political temperature grew too hot, the custom 
had for ages been to break the thermometer, not on any ac- 
count to let in the cool air. And the Emperor kept to it reli- 
giously. The results now began to appear. 

I wrote at the time, *The position is no longer endurable. 
The crisis can now end in one way only — in the disappear- 
ance of that system of absolutism the advantages of which I 
hoped — vainly hoped, alas! — to see rescued for the sake of 
the nation. At present the one question which to my think- 
ing may still be profitably discussed is whether, while there 
is yet time, the autocrat will voluntarily dissociate the future 
of his dynasty from that of the autocracy. Will he cast his 
semi-divine privileges overboard in the storm to save his 
position in the Empire, and perhaps what he values even 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS 11. 131 

more than his position? That is a matter which primarily, 
almost exclusively, concerns himself and his inspirers of the 
boudoir council, who still fancy that windmills may be 
turned with a hand-bellows. The other interested party, 
the nation, whose prisoner Nicholas II. may be truly said to 
be, has already chosen its route — the shortest road to the 
goal, and will travel along it resolutely. It is for those who 
advise and wish well to Nicholas to say whether he will 
desist from the policy of provocation now being pursued in 
his name. When the nation has been fully aroused it will be 
too late. And the time still left for reflection seems la- 
mentably short. 

''Argument and suasion have unhappily proved, fruitless. 
To the one he is blind; he is deaf to the other. The belief is 
spreading that that is his misfortune, not his crime. Minister 
after minister warned him of the dangers fast gathering 
round him. *'Yes, yes, I understand," was the evasive reply : 
and the well-meant intimation left as little trace in heart or 
brain as a drop of rain water on the back of a duck. His 
nobles petitioned him, his zemstvos memorialised him, 
every class, every profession and element of the population, 
besought him to reform the administration and admit the 
people to a share in the government. For a moment he ap- 
peared to listen, and then turned away. Almost every 
nation on the globe adjured him to put an end to the unprece- 
dented horrors of a wanton war. Again he seemed to pay 
attention, but he soon moved aside and talked of something 
else. For the whole world is wrong and Nicholas alone is 
right. The individual who goes up to the clouds in an air- 
filled balloon does not see himself ascending, but only his 
fellow-men sinking away into insignificance. This unnerved 
young man, completely shut off from the world and with 
hardly a peep-hole to look through, knows better what 
should and can be done there than the intellect of the people, 
the wisdom of the world. For he is buoyed up by the en- 
couragement and admiration of the council of the boudoir. 
In his thirst for approval he dismissed several advisers and 
chose others; but the new ones repeated the warnings of 
their predecessors. He then appointed a council of ministers 



132 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

in order to escape from the importunity of Witte, but his 
entire council as one man, not only offered him wholesome 
advice, but took care that he should adopt it. And now he 
convokes it no more. Who knows how far it might go? 
*Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coutef His own relatives, 
the political grand dukes, have abandoned him. They sud- 
denly stopped short in their onward course, wheeled round, 
and bowing respectfully to the liberals made their profession 
of faith. His own mother talked with him, exhorted and im- 
plored him to see things as they are. Then she too finally 
ranged herself on the side of the moderate reformers. This 
distinguished lady is now in favour of representative govern- 
ment, strongly sides with those who desire peace, and mate- 
rially helped to obtain at least one instalment of justice to the 
Finns. She also sympathises with the down-trodden tribes 
of the Caucasus and regrets the spoliation of the Church 
property of the Armenians. It was largely due to her in- 
fluence that Count Vorontseff Dashkoff has been appointed 
viceroy there in succession to the madcap Prince Galitzin. 
In a word she has made motherly love quite compatible with 
plain speaking and a policy of common sense.'^ ^ 

Von Plehve's tenure of office was rich in amazing develop- 
ments, for there is no gainsaying the statesmanlike quality 
of his intellect, his German a-morality, or his susceptibility 
to all sorts of new impressions. The way in which he strove 
to solve the awkward problems to which the labour move- 
ment was imparting actuality was truly Machiavellian, and 
the unerring discrimination that revealed to him the value 
of a human instrument like Father Gapon bespoke a fine 
Hair and remarkable courage. But the conditions he found 
and had to accept as data hampered him considerably. In- 
stinctively he felt that the State top must go on spinning to 
keep from falling, and he accordingly encouraged the Tsar 
in the policy of conquest that culminated in war with Japan. 
For Russia's whole ordering was adjusted to expansion by 
force. It was largely this and his passion for espionage that 
turned Witte against him and made them bitter enemies. 

I well rememJDer seeing him killed. I described the murder 
^ Cf. National Review, May, 1905, pp. 440 fol. 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS IL 133 

in the Daily Telegraph. On the historic day I was driving 
over the badly paved streets of Petersburg to the landing- 
place for steamers to meet a friend who was coming from 
Ireland to stay with me. My droshky was in the street lead- 
ing to the Warsaw railway station when two men on bicycles 
glided past, followed by a closed carriage, which I recognised 
as that of the all-powerful minister. Suddenly the ground 
before me quivered, a tremendous sound as of thunder 
deafened me, the windows of the houses on both sides of the 
broad street rattled, and the glass of the panes was hurled on 
to the stone pavement. A dead horse, a pool of blood, frag- 
ments of a carriage, and a hole in the ground were parts of 
my rapid impressions. My driver was on his knees devoutly 
praying and saying that the end of the world had come. I 
got down from my seat and moved towards the hole, but a 
police officer ordered me back, and to my questions replied 
that the minister Plehve had been blown to fragments. The 
man who materially contributed to condemn him to death, 
and who had the sentence thus effectively carried out, was 
the favourite spy of the government and member of the 
Social Revolutionary Council, Azeff. In truth it was a mad 
world. 

Plehve's end was received with semi-public rejoicings. I 
met nobody who regretted his assassination or condemned 
the authors. This attitude towards crime, although by no 
means new, struck me as one of the most sinister features of 
the situation, and I gave expression to my apprehension of 
its consequences.^ Far more surprising was the attitude of 
the government towards its own agent, Azeff, who con- 
ceived and concerted the misdeed and saw it carried out. 
This monster was allowed to remain in the gcnerunient 
service, and even after he had the Tsar's uncle, the Grand 
Duke Sergius, assassinated he was kept on, and his services 
were deemed to be invaluable and indispensable! 

When Plehve had vanished, the Grand Duke Sergius 

^ In the National Review, May, 1905, p. 420, I wrote: "In that connivance 
at lawless violence lurks a (lander the insitliousness of wliich few people 
realise. IVrsonally I fear that unless its progress he speedily stayed it 
may lead to the moral paralysis of the nation." Those words were penned 
thirteen years ago. 



134 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

steered the ship of State, standing harsh and defiant behind 
the professional man at the wheel. He had just flung in the 
face of the people the accusation which, though resented as 
a calumny, was, in a restricted sense, true enough of many of 
the revolutionists, that they had sold their Tsar for Japanese 
gold.^ And a few weeks later Sergius, like Plehve, was ruth- 
lessly, criminally cut down in the height of his triumphant 
activity, the nation again looking on without disapproval and 
the government continuing to fee the chief assassin. 

These deaths, which made a deep impression upon all 
Russia, left the Tsar undisturbed. Living and working 
apart from the currents of the time, he seemed impermeable 
to deep impressions. But the disappearance of those two 
counsellors left him conspicuously alone. They had no suc- 
cessors to share with him the moral burden. Skilful flat- 
terers he had many, but no helpful friend. From motives 
which it would be impertinent to analyse, the few he had 
had left him for the time or definitely forsook him. The 
grand dukes withdrew from the partnership once so lucra- 
tive, now grown so dangerous, taking elaborate precautions 
to advertise the fact, urbi et orbi. Some of them pointed to 
the sickly figure of the Tsar and all but cried, "Ecce homo" 
Almost the first to go was the Grand Duke Vladimir, who 
after the massacre of Red Sunday defended himself in 
American and English journals. The responsibility for the 
shooting, he explained, was not his but that of Prince Vas- 
silchikoff, who refused point-blank to obey the humane 
grand-ducal order to cease firing on the people, and refused 
with perfect impunity. Again, after the terrible death of 
Sergius, a London newspaper informed all whom it might 
concern of the political conversion of Vladimir, who "recog- 
nises that the worship of the idol of absolutism is a worse foe 
of the monarchy than anarchy itself." ^ 

Next among the runaways from the sinking ship of autoc- 
racy was the ambitious Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovitch. 
This personage was the one nationalist member of the 
imperial family whose zeal burned for genuine Russian 
civilisation untouched by the contagion of Western culture. 

* The grand duke added "and English gold." In this he was mistaken. 
*Ci. Times, 23rd March, 1905. 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II. 135 

He had just displayed his patriotic hatred of foreigners by 
organising a raid against their mercantile shipping, and 
showed his love of Russia by promoting the Yalu concession, 
which was to have enriched himself and weakened Japan. 
The political apostasy of this promising prince was perhaps 
the unkindest cut of all. For he owed many of the best 
things he possessed to the Tsar, while the Tsar was be- 
holden to him only for some of the pernicious counsels he 
had received and of the evil counsellors he had trusted. 
Married to the sister of Nicholas 11. , the Grand Duke Alex- 
ander used and abused his great but precarious influence to 
recommend Bezobrazoff and Alexeyeff to his imperial brother- 
in-law who, caught in the lime of flattery, allowed these ad- 
venturers to ride rough-shod over Russia. He was the pur- 
veyor of political favourites to the monarch, one of whom was 
Admiral Alexeyeff. 

This grand duke possessed the open sesame to his 
brother-in-law's affections and utilised it constantly. The 
Tsar was a frequent guest in Alexander's palace, where he 
would amuse himself for hours on end riding in a miniature 
train around one of the apartments. And in the intervals of 
this innocent fun shared by the children, he would assent to 
some important suggestion of the shrewd grand duke, who 
in this casual way managed to have a new ministry created 
for his behoof unknown to Witte, whom he hated undyingly. 
From the authorisation of the Yalu concession, Alexander 
Mikhailovitch expected to add millions to his annual income 
of 600,000 roubels. But after Plehve's death he became a 
liberal and bruited his conversion abroad. Russian news- 
papers were full of it, and even revolutionists were apprised 
of it. Happily he had a press organ of his own,^ through 
which he pointed out to the world the fruits of his con- 
version. 

Again, it was known that in his unregenerate days this 
illustrious personage hated the Jews as Saul of Tarsus had 
hated the Christians. But since the deaths of Plehve and 
Sergius he had his Damascus, and the scales having fallen 
from his eyes he found salvation. He was no longer a 

* Slovo. 



136 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

militant anti-Semite. God having presumably made the 
Jews, the grand duke was willing thenceforth to let them 
pass for men of an inferior race. 

But by far the most noteworthy sign of the times was the 
departure of the dowager empress herself from the camp of 
the absolutists, if one may describe thus clumsily her mild 
assent to counsels prompted by common sense, and her 
gentle but persevering disapproval of measures which, 
besides harming the nation, endangered the dynasty. 
Whether solicitude for her son or pity for the people sup- 
plied the motive is a matter of indifference to outsiders; 
the step was well warranted by both. This distinguished 
lady, whose inborn tact and savoir faire often stood her 
instead of political foresight, now sorrowfully parted from 
her son and daughter-in-law at the first most critical moment 
in their lives. Such a step cannot have been taken with a 
light heart. Having journeyed together for more than a 
decade in the pursuit of a political will-o'-the-wisp, the 
elder of the two empresses, with experience to guide her, 
descried an abyss in front and cried, "Halt.'* And yet that 
was the road which she herself had so often exhorted her 
son never to swerve from! But her eyes had been opened; 
she had lost faith in the policy of putting spokes in the 
wheels of time. The beliefs on which the Tsardom reposed 
were crumbling away, and she then began to realise the fact. 
She felt that the institutions to which her son clung convul- 
sively, as might a scared seaman to the heavy anchor of a 
sinking ship, would drag him down to the depths. And 
with the courage born of motherly love she warned him of 
the danger. But Cassandra's prophecies were not more 
vain or true. The siren's voice from the boudoir of the wife 
went straight to the husband's heart. Unhappily, the wife's 
exhortations were but the echoes of the son's neurotic 
visions. In her naive dreams there was no place for prosaic 

fears, and her fond ambition was blind to obstacles and to 
consequences. It would be rash to criticise without know- 
ing the order of considerations that moved the lady to turn 

a deaf ear to the voice of the dowager empress. But it is not 
easy to imagine any rational grounds on which her own 



THE RULE OF NICHOLAS II. 137 

sister reasoning, advising, beseeching, should also have 
been put out of court without a hearing. The widowed 
Grand Duchess Sergius, whose vision long experience had 
sharpened, and whose motives had been chastened by severe 
suffering, sought over and over again to impress upon her 
crowned sister the fact that there are times when true con- 
jugal affection is more effectually shown by judicious hin- 
drance than by uncritical incentive. 

Nicholas II., who rejected the promptings of reason, now 
began to be regarded by his people as the principal cause of 
their sufferings, the embodiment of a system that must at all 
costs be overthrown. Pobiedonostseff, without formally 
retiring, had done his work, and it remained only for history 
to label it. Witte, fretting and chafing against his forced in- 
action, gave a loose rein to his criticisms, ostentatiously con- 
nected his policy which had thus been baulked with widely 
operating economic laws and began to be identified with 
the aggressive desire of moderate liberals to work out the 
salvation of the country in spite of its crowned head. The 
dowager empress saw him occasionally and made praise- 
worthy attempts to bring her son and him together, but 
finally discovered that they were as fire and water. In one 
conversation she had with the statesman she admitted 
frankly that the aversion of the Emperor for his most 
eminent subject was invincible. Still his services were not 
wholly disdained. Whenever there was a very difBcult or a 
dangerous task to be undertaken, Witte's name was invari- 
ably pronounced, and for his Tsar's and country's sake he 
was exhorted to undertake it. It was thus that he was chosen 
to carry on the negotiations with the Kaiser's government 
which ended in the hated Russo-German commercial 
treaty, to report on the needs of the peasants and recom- 
mend a series of reforms, and to repair to Portsmouth to 
conclude peace with the Japanese. Thus from time to time 
the two men worked together. For Witte, driven by bound- 
less aml)ition, was generally ready to snatch at any chance 
of playing a prominent and useful part in the history of his 
country. When I pointed out to him — as I sometimes did — 
the difTiculty I had to harmonise these acts of his with his 



138 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

own words, he would return this answer, "You seem to 
forget that we live in Russia under an autocracy, and that I, 
who have so long been minister, cannot refuse any request 
made by the Tsar for my services, if I have reason to think 
that they would prove helpful to him or the country. The 
unwritten law, the traditions in which I have been brought 
up, and my conscience oblige me to respond to the call." 

But Witte's counsel on political matters, although rein- 
forced by events, was almost invariably rejected. The Tsar 
had other advisers who drew their political wisdom from the 
world of spirits, and to them he hearkened submissively. 
Two princesses whom I had known in their school-days, the 
French charlatan Philippe, and certain shadowy figures that 
flitted across one's field of vision, most of them to sink in 
oblivion immediately afterwards, were the intermediaries 
between the Supreme Being and his vicar on earth. For the 
grim realities around him he had no eyes. He ignored even 
the secret council held in Paris some months before ^ in 
which it was decided to unite a number of powerful Russian 
organisations and to get them to bring pressure to bear 
jointly on himself, ^ and to make the most of the indigna- 
tion aroused in the land by the conduct of the Manchurian 
campaign and the cruelties committed by the authorities 
in dealing with the revolutionists. Congruously with this 
secret plan professional congresses were being held every- 
where, a medical congress, a lawyers' congress, a congress 
of engineers, a teachers' congress, a peasants' congress, a 
postal congress, and, most important of all, a congress of 
railway men. These organisations represented to my think- 
ing the forces that would eventually transform the political 
and economic ordering of the Tsardom. And I gave public 
expression to that conviction. Events confirmed this view. 
It was these leagues and the central league of leagues that 
brought about the general strike which forced the hand of 
the Tsar. Trepoff discerned the power and the future role 
of the leagues and prohibited them. 

*In October, 1904. 

' The Finnish, Polish socialists and social revolutionaries entered into 
this league. The social democrats condemned it as preposterous. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Beginnings of the Revolutionary Movement 

OF 1905 

The men who first undertook the spade work and cleared 
the ground for the great upheaval were humane, moderate 
workers, mostly from the provinces, whose strivings were 
free from all taint of crime and whose ideals did not go 
beyond a constitutional monarchy. Even parliamentary 
government was more than they asked for at first. But like 
most Russian politicians they knew not what they were 
doing. Plehve was no more. The Japanese war was taking 
an unfavourable turn and the head of the government was 
anxious to hit upon some modus vivendi with the intelli- 
gentsia. I remember the historic Saturday afternoon ^ when 
ninety-eight country gentlemen, without a mandate from 
the people or permission from the government, met together 
in a private flat on one of the quays of St. Petersburg to dis- 
cuss the best way of rearranging the relations between the 
rulers and the ruled. Their meeting the authorities had 
promised to connive at on condition that they should elimi- 
nate all political discussions from their programme, but to 
this they refused to agree. I knew many of them for mild 
and loyal citizens who were quite ready to pull out the key- 
stone, but innocently believed that they could still maintain 
the arch. In particular, Prince LvofF and my friend Count 
Hey den were paragons of reasonableness. I was not sur- 
prised, therefore, to learn that when the resolution calling 
for constitutional government was put to the ninety-eight 
members present, twenty-seven considered the demand too 
radical and voted against it, while the remainder gave it 
their support. The congress was a success. From all 
parts of the Empire came telegrams from town councils and 
zemstvos endorsing the resolution. The Russian people 
were on fire. All sections of society, all classes of the 
*i9th November, 1904. Cf. North American Review. 
139 



140 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

population, drawn from their moorings by the new cur- 
rent, hastened to avail themselves of the slightest pretext 
to come together and demand the abolition of one-man power. 
The lawyers of St. Petersburg signed a petition praying fori 
constitutional government. The working men organised a 
vast manifestation in favour of representative institutions. 
Authors took to propagating liberal doctrines throughout 
the Empire. Journalists vied with authors. Municipalities, 
guilds, benevolent associations, seconded the demands of 
the zemstvos. A section of students published a manifesto 
in which they proclaimed that autocracy must cease to be, 
the "infamous war must be stopped, and a Constitutional 
Assembly immediately convoked." At first all that the 
leaders wanted was practical recognition of the principle 
that the time had come for progressive and systematic adap- 
tations of the State and its institutions to the new exigencies, 
as though mere political reforms could now save Tsarism 
and the bureaucracy. 

All the older parties took higher ground, clamoured for 
more radical changes, and looked to the war and its vicissi- 
tudes for some precipitating event that should give them the 
opportunity for which they had so long waited in vain. Symp- 
toms of a change in the mood of labour struck attentive 
observers and heightened the gravity of the crisis. Timid 
men waxed bold and made public confession of their faith, 
regardless of consequences to themselves; princes stepped 
forward as champions of the peasants; wealthy landowners 
subscribed to the funds for agitating against the regime; 
Prince Viazemsky publicly protested against an attack by 
the Cossacks on a crowd in front of the Kazan Cathedral in 
St. Petersburg and was sent in disgrace to his estate by the 
Tsar. Bureaucrats who had theretofore stood by the govern- 
ment now announced that, come what might, they would 
throw in their lot with the people. And of the temper, the 
ideals, and the mental workings of the people they had not 
even an approximate notion. For instance, an official of 
my acquaintance, who was about to be appointed to 
the governorship of a certain province, signed a petition 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEISIENT 141 

for a legislative assembly and thereby ruined his career. 
The unanimous council of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic 
Institute — a model educational establishment founded by 
Witte — forwarded a memorial to the Minister of Finances, 
recording their firm conviction that technical education was 
impossible so long as the political and social conditions 
inseparable from autocracy remained unchanged. The mu- 
nicipality of Yalta telegraphed to Prince Mirsky its certi- 
tude that the high bill of mortality in the towns and cities of 
Russia was one of the direct effects of the autocracy, and 
could not be bettered until the cause was removed. The 
legal bar of St. Petersburg and Moscow sent a deputation to 
the capital to petition for representative government. In a 
word the reformers — and practically all the intellectuals 
were now reformers — made arrows out of every wood that 
came handy. 

On 1 2th December the provincial Zemsky Congress of 
Kaluga forwarded an address to the Emperor, which created 
a stir throughout the length and breadth of Russia. The 
members archly volunteered to rally round his Majesty and 
support him "against the enemies of law and order," i.e., 
the bureaucracy. They ended their address with a hope that 
the Tsar would summon elected representatives of the land 
to contribute to its peaceful development and prosperity. 

The Moscow Town Council unanimously adopted a 
resolution declaring the absolute necessity of such reforms 
as the legal protection of the individual against the arbitrary 
measures of officialdom; the repeal of those exceptional 
regulations which invested the local authorities with power 
to imprison or banish anybody without assigning a reason; 
freedom of creed, of the press, of meeting, and of associa- 
tion; a popular chamber to watch over these popular rights 
and to supervise the government. The St. Petersburg 
municipality adopted a similar resolution. Banquets were 
organised at which fiery speeches were delivered, like those 
we read of in Paris on the eve of the great revolution. .'\t 
one of these festive gatherings in a public hall the guests, 
numbering several thousands, covered the portrait of the 



142 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Tsar with a red flag, on which the inscription was painfully 
visible in white letters, ''Down with the Autocracy." At 
many others the two men who killed Plehve were unani- 
mously honoured. The counsel for Sazonoff — one of the 
two — said in his speech for the defence, 'The bomb which 
blew M. Plehve to pieces was filled not with dynamite, but 
with the tears of the widows and orphans of those whom he 
had sent to the scaffold, to dreary dungeons, and to Siberia." 
No such plain speaking had been heard since Russia became 
an Empire. 

The imperial family, in the person of one of the empresses, 
had been warned by royalties abroad that it would be greatly 
to the advantage of the autocrat, as well as of autocracy, if a 
sop were thrown to the popular Cerberus. Good grounds 
were alleged for this opinion, and the Tsar was gradually 
attuned to a conciliatory mood. He professed his willing- 
ness to make concessions and to promise reforms; but he 
would not, of course, put sharp weapons into the hands of 
"his children," and "still less would he divest himself of any 
of the powers with which God Himself had invested him." 
That was the monarch's attitude — unforeseen by many of 
the liberals who had looked forward either to frank opposi- 
tion or graceful consent. And his acts were in harmony 
with it.^ He warmly supported the minister. Prince Mirsky, 
against whom an intrigue was coarsely spun by a number of 
courtiers and by the ubiquitous grand duke. For a while he 
allowed the press to have its fling and the zemstvo represen- 
tatives to speak their minds; but there he drew the line. 
There must be no tampering with the rights and preroga- 
tives of the absolute monarchy. Whatever else might go they 
at any rate should remain inviolate and inviolable. Neither 
must the war be condemned nor peace with the Japanese 
advocated. Russia, and more especially the reigning dynasty, 
had need, he said, of a decisive victory over the yellow- 
skins. The newspapers were accordingly prohibited from 
publishing any of the cries for peace which were being 
plaintively or menacingly uttered all over the country. 

At last the Emperor showed his hand and announced the 
* Cf. North American Review. 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 143 

measure to which all those petty concessions formed the 
prelude. A ukase was drawn up granting certain reforms. 
It was to have been promulgated on 13th December, but 
almost on the eve considerable changes were made in the 
wording and its publication was delayed. In its original 
shape it covered the political and agrarian fields, laid down 
regulations for the press, defined the rights of religious non- 
conformists, introduced State insurance for working men, 
theoretically substituted law for caprice, and provided for 
the creation of an assembly with a consultative voice in 
legislation. Such were the general contents of the nine 
clauses of Witte's pristine scheme. The consultative Duma 
he proposed to convoke was to be elected, not directly by the 
people, but by the zemstvos for the rural population and by 
the municipal councils for the cities and towns. This as- 
sembly would have been devoid of initiative and without 
control over the public purse. Its function would be to 
examine and pronounce upon bills which had been passed 
by the Council of the Empire, but had not yet received the 
imperial sanction. As, however, the Council of the Empire 
itself possessed no claim to legislate, but only to make pro- 
posals which the Tsar could accept, modify, or thrust aside 
at will, the projected Duma, its critics argued, would have 
been the fifth wheel in the State chariot. Still, as a pledge of 
something more substantial to come, many would have 
welcomed it. This ninth clause, which was the pith of the 
project, had the approval of Witte, Prince Mirsky, and three 
other responsible officials. 

The Tsar when he read the draft angrily struck out the 
last clause. "It is wasted effort," he exclaimed, "to ask me 
to sap or weaken the autocracy." In vain Prince Mirsky 
urged that the Duma planned by Witte would leave all his 
powers and prerogatives intact. He was unconvinced and 
stubborn. And seeing that the Grand Duke Sergius anathe- 
matised the plan as subversive, and had a savage attack on it 
published in his own press organ,* the ninth clause was 
expunged. By foolish resistance like this to every proposal 

* Shvo. 



144 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

which, by giving temporary satisfaction to the demands for 
reform, would have created a safety valve to carry off 
dangerous revolutionary energies, Nicholas II. stored up 
the vast forces which ultimately swept the autocracy away. 
A ruler of a different temperament, one like the Grand Duke 
Vladimir, or even the Tsar's weak and plastic brother 
Michael, would have bent to the various storms and pro- 
longed the life of the dynasty. Nicholas II. was incapable of 
any such compromise, because he failed to take in the situa- 
tion, to gauge the national and international forces that had 
shaped it, to perceive the bearings of these on the regime 
and the dynasty, and also because he was wanting in moral 
courage and political suppleness. He never represented 
anything adequately, not even the petty interests of his own 
house. Unlike Witte, who with all his defects impressed 
one with the size and quality of an historic force, and for a 
while bulked large as the massive centre round which the 
hopes and energies of the reforming State-upholders clung, 
he stood for himself alone, and had no deep feeling even 
for his own cause. Genuine humanity, active benevolence, 
social duty received no admission among the motives that 
determined his public policy. Of his fellow-men he was 
hardly conscious; to their well-being and their sufferings he 
was callously indifferent. 

It would, however, be rash to conclude that even a 
statesmanlike monarch, had there been one in the place of 
Nicholas II., would have been able by dint of political tact 
to do more than prolong the existence of the autocracy for 
a few years more. By its very terms the work of readjust- 
ment to radically changed and changing conditions was no 
longer feasible, the utmost still possible being the postpone- 
ment of the fatal collapse. For, as already remarked, the 
Tsarist State was from the outset informed by the spirit of 
territorial conquest and its orientation was towards that, 
while at home a victorious race ruled over other races and a 
privileged class lorded it over the bulk of the nation. As 
long as these conditions — which alone gave cohesion to the 
parts — were upheld, things would go on as before, until the 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 145 

whole organism was destroyed, but once change them, 
desist from territorial expansion, cultivate friendly relations 
with neighbouring States, introduce at home principles of 
equity in economics, of equality in politics, of liberty in 
religion, and the cement which alone held the rebellious 
elements together would forthwith crumble away. The 
State, like a boy's top that ceases to spin, could not but lose 
its equilibrium, wobble, and fall. 

That was the cardinal truth which ought to have been 
grasped by Russian statesmen working for reform. Witte 
had lightning-like flashes of it. He at any rate was eager to 
substitute in advance voluntary and economic links for the 
irksome bonds of union which radical reform measures 
suddenly applied would sunder. He snatched at every oppor- 
tunity to try the experiment. That was the principle which 
underlay his policy towards the Poles, the Finns, the Jews, 
the Armenians, and the other non-Russian peoples of tlie 
Empire, whenever he was free to turn his attention to them. 

The liberals or intelligentsia started from a different and, 
as it seemed to me, entirely false conception of the terms of 
the problem. Mere doctrinaires, and moving far apart from 
the popular currents, they operated with borrowed theories 
and assumed that what was true, say, of France would hold 
good of Russia. Successors of the men who had "gone 
among the people" only to discover that they could not 
fathom the nation's depths, they entirely misunderstood the 
ideals and strivings of the peasantry. In their own political 
organisation they had enlisted neither peasants nor work- 
ing men as members, and yet they came forward as the 
authorised spokesmen of both. And that group of western- 
ised politicians always stood only for the intelligentsia or 
foreign political ideal-mongers who had no vested interests 
in the country, and dealt mainly in abstractions, imported 
conceptions, and exotic theories. This master fact of the 
new situation appears to have been wholly missed by .our 
diplomacy, loail and central. For Britain and France took 
the liberals, who subsequently became the Kadets, as their 
advisers, and made support of the Kadets the corner-stone of 



146 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

their Russian policy. MM. Milyukoff, Gutchkoff, Rod- 
zianko, and their friends were the oracles whose utterances 
were eagerly sought after and whose counsels were gener- 
ally followed — with the deplorable results recorded in recent 
history. These were upright, honourable, enlightened men 
who lacked political experience and acquaintanceship with 
the temper of their own people. 

From the first it was certain, if not obvious, that the 
radical reform of the Russian regime would entail the 
break-up of the State by the dissolution of the cement that 
had theretofore held its constituent parts together. That 
was the fundamental, ever-present danger inherent in every 
reform movement. And this redoubtable consequence was 
modifiable only within narrow time-limits, and provided 
that the throne was occupied by a statesman or else by a 
monarch who had chosen one as his minister, and that the 
most stringent self-control and prudence were exercised by 
the reformers. As for a violent rebellion with the aid or the 
connivance of the army, it was certain — considering the 
instincts and the ignorance of the lower classes — to culmin- 
ate, not in a glorious revolution, but in swift disruption and 
ruin. This was the logical and necessary outcome of the 
ethnic, social, cultural, and religious conditions of the 
nation. Before the outbreak of November, 1905, I wrote, 
"Revolution in Russia will prove to be a very different 
process from what it was in France or elsewhere ... it 
may at certain stages be marked by a degree of ferocity 
which the peoples of the United States and Western Europe 
can hardly realise."^ That forecast was published nearly 
twelve years before the Bolshevik revolution of September, 
191 7, which amply confirmed it. 

But the leading spirits of the liberal party were dissatisfied 
with the reforms outlined in the ukase and with Witte, to 
whom the wording of them was attributed. They com- 

* Cf. North American Review, Januar>'. 190S. P- 300. I remembered this 
and similar forecasts of mine in the following year when reading of the 
unfortunate men whom the revolutionists set to dance on hot sheets gf 

iron and then slowly burned to death, 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 147 

plained that the Tsar was selling dearly and in detail what 
they had petitioned him to bestow upon them gratis and 
wholesale, and, worse still, that he did not intend to deliver 
what he had sold. They had sued for the abolition of classes 
and class privileges and he promised the disappearance of 
certain legal disabilities which weighed upon the peasants. 
They had agitated in favour of liberty of conscience and he 
dangled before them the revision of the legislation restrict- 
ing the rights of certain nonconformist sects and the re- 
moval of disabilities which did not derive from statute law. 
They had prayed for the repeal of the coercion ukase, known 
by the name of Protective Regulations, which placed the 
liberty and life of all Russians at the mercy of the local 
jacks-in-office, and he merely gave instructions to lessen the 
number of the districts thus trodden underfoot. They had 
besought him to grant liberty of the press, but all that he 
undertook was to remove *'the superfluous" restrictions 
placed upon it, and meanwhile newspapers were being sus- 
pended or suppressed. They had claimed the right of public 
meeting and of association, but these claims he wholly 
ignored. They had begged that Ukrainians, Poles, Finns, 
Jews, Armenians — all the great non-Russian elements, in a 
word — might be delivered from the persecution they were 
enduring, but the ukase engaged only to strike off those legal 
fetters which were not conditioned "by the vital interests of 
the State and the manifest advantage of the Russian people." 
Who was to define these? The persecuting bureaucracy. 
And worse than everything else, the representative assembly, 
which was to have been, so to say, the corner-stone of re- 
generated Russia, was relegated to the limbo of things that 
might have been. 

To sum up, the measures announced in the manifesto 
would, it was urged, be absurdly inadequate even if they 
were meant to be realised. And they could never take root 
because they would always be liable to be withdrawn, that 
being the end of all reforms in Russia. People called to mind 
that several of the more important concessions made from 
the days of Nicholas I. had been either formally repealed or 



148 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

else cunningly counteracted by the ministers of Alexander III. 
or of Nicholas 11. The very ukase to which the wretched 
serfs owed their emancipation had since then been partially 
evaded, and the peasantry were being tied to the soil anew 
by M. Plehve when his life was suddenly snuffed out. Yet 
those concessions had been not merely promised, but actu- 
ally realised; they formed part of the law of the Empire. 
That did not save them from partial abolition. Were the 
reforms just promised likely to be durable, if those which 
were actually embodied in legislation were so successfully 
undermined? Russia, in the person of her spokesmen, 
answered, "No." 

If the reformers were ordinarily exacting beyond measure, 
their demands in this case were moderate and their strictures 
unanswerable. The first paragraph of the ukase, they 
objected, proclaimed the inauguration of a reign of law and 
the abolition of caprice. This loud-sounding improvement 
was in reality merely a paraphrase of the 47th paragraph of 
the fundamental laws of the Empire which Prince Dolgoruki 
had termed "la plus volumineuse des mauvaises plai- 
santeries" — and it had remained a dead letter for genera- 
tions because of the greed of arbitrary power displayed by 
the bureaucracy. And as it had been in the past, so it would 
be in the future. If the Tsar were in earnest about reform 
he would surely have forbidden the punishment of any of 
his subjects otherwise than by sentence of the law courts. 
That he did not take this direct, simple, and effective method 
was, they held, proof that his intention was only conditional. 

How superficial was the attention paid by the Tsar to 
legislative work may be gathered from the following farcical 
quid pro quo which took place when Witte was Minister of 
Finances. A bill was introduced in the Council of the Empire 
to indemnify landed proprietors in the Baltic provinces for 
the losses they had incurred through the government mono- 
poly of alcohol. Witte held that the payment of a sum of 
several millions should be spread over a number of years, the 
majority maintained that it ought to be effected at once. The 
minister first informed the Tsar of this divergence, and the 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 149 

Tsar promised to ratify the view of the minority. The 
minister then wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Council, 
Phehve, telling him that the Emperor had promised to 
acquiesce in the decision of the minority as soon as the docu- 
ments were placed before him. Plehve freely communi- 
cated this announcement to all the members, whereupon 
many officials, seeing that opposition would be fruitless, 
changed their views or their votes, so that the minority 
unexpectedly became the majority. In the course of time the 
documents were laid before the Tsar, who remembered only 
that he had pledged himself to Witte to reject the proposal 
of the majority. Accordingly, without reading the papers 
or taking further thought, he redeemed his promise, and 
the wrong bill became law. 

In the administration as in legislation he frequently inter- 
posed with like rashness and with untoward consequences. 
For the motives that actuated him were generally personal 
and sometimes irreconcilable with the principles of justice 
which, had he allowed things to take their course, would 
have been applied. I remember the case of a journalist with 
whom I was slightly acquainted. In a twinkling he was very 
suddenly whirled away from Petersburg to Siberia, without 
being allowed time to take money or warm clothing with him, 
because of an article of his, or rather because of the inter- 
pretation put upon it by the Tsar's confessor, Yanisheff 
Amphitheatroff, the journalist, published a moderately 
interesting article describing the home circle of a landed 
proprietor, whom he depicted as firm and strict with his 
family, and so scrupulous in his dealings with the other sex 
that he boiled with indignation if his wife's chambermaid 
flirted with any male relative or stranger. He had a sym- 
pathetic son, with eyes like a gazelle's — a well-meaning youth 
who wished everybody to be happy, but was devoid of ideas 
on practical matters. The kind-hearted mother sat between 
father and son, tenderly loving both. It was an idyllic 
picture of Russian life at its best — and nothing more. The 
censor read it and saw nothing wrong. The minister, 
Sipyaghin, glanced at it and passed on cheerfully to his hot 



150 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

pancakes and cold caviare. The Tsar himself perused it and 
liked it : it was "such a pleasing picture of the serene life of 
a Russian squire." But the Emperor's chaplain, Yanisheff, 
descried high treason between the lines. According to him, 
and he was probably right, the landed proprietor, who 
struck the table with his fist whenever he heard of a little 
flirtation on the part of his wife's maid, was no other than 
the Emperor Alexander III. ; the son with the sympathetic 
eyes and vacillating character was Nicholas II. As the 
portrait, if intended as such, was not flattering, it needed 
courage on the part of the priest even to hint that the in- 
genuous youth of limited ideas was obviously his Majesty; 
and the Tsar must be credited with considerable modesty 
to have placed the cap on his imperial head. He at once 
summoned and questioned his minister Sipyaghin. *'Yes, 
I read the feuilleton, your Majesty, but noticed nothing 
offensive in it." "Well," replied the Emperor, "you may 
take it from me that it is a treasonable skit on my never-to- 
be-forgotten father and myself. Send the fellow to Siberia." 
And to Siberia he was whisked away, without a chance to buy 
warm clothing for the journey or to get money for his needs. 
It was not much consolation to M. Amphitheatroff that he 
was subsequently pardoned for a mere misdemeanour of 
which he said he was innocent and then banished to 
Vologda. 

Witte, whose steady pacifism stamped a profound influence 
on Russian politics generally and gained for his imperial 
master the nowise merited reputation of a humane, moral, 
and generous monarch, was constantly urging upon him the 
necessity of political reforms in the interest both of the 
autocracy and the nation. "The autocracy," he would 
remark to me in our long conversations, "is but a mode of 
conceiving the relations between the ruling board and the 
nation. And with vision, enterprise, and resource it can be 
made as productive of good as a parliamentary government, 
especially in a backward country like ours. But you must 
first find a monarch which wisdom, enterprise, and resource, 
or with discrimination and modesty enough to select a 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 151 

statesman who possesses them and to maintain him in 
office. Alexander II. was such a monarch and I shall never 
cease to lament his death." He perceived with painful clear- 
ness that the elements of the nation were ill-assorted, that 
most institutions were disorganised, and that anarchist ideas 
fitted in with the social and political conditions. Therefore 
he strove to get these changed. A simulacrum of reforms 
was, as we saw, dangled before the eyes of the nation in 
March, 1903, a mere promise which would, it was hoped, 
produce a sedative efifect and then pass into easy oblivion. It 
was drafted by Plehve, bore the stamp of his inspiration, and 
made a considerable stir in Russia and abroad. Taken in 
consideration with the high reputation which had been 
created for the Tsar it was believed to portend great and 
beneficent changes. But stripped of the tawdry wrappings 
in which Plehve enveloped it, what it amounted to was the 
abolition of the peasants' joint responsibility for taxation and 
the removal of some religious restrictions. 

Witte, who had a keen eye for religious intolerance and 
proselytism by the State, and was never tired of pleading the 
cause of freedom, had moved the Emperor to make this sorely 
needed concession to the spirit of the time. But beyond the 
promise he could not get the bureaucracy or its agents to 
move. He would sometimes lose patience utterly and 
exclaim to me, "How can I hinder a revolution if even such 
anodyne measures are deemed too radical to be carried out? 
I begin to despair of the autocracy." In the most sanative 
elements of his policy Witte was over-ruled by a crowd of 
puny men without responsibility before history or even 
before their contemporaries. After the manifesto promising 
religious freedom, the Jews were hampered and ''squeezed" 
perhaps more systematically than before, and by no one more 
intensely than by the Emperor's uncle, the Grand Duke 
Sergius, the Governor-General of Moscow. Roman Catholics 
were also the objects of continual chicanery, especially in the 
Polish provinces, and the law obliging those among them 
who married persons of the Orthodox Church to bring up 
their children in the State creed was applied with rigour. 



152 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

To belong to the Armenian Church was to be branded with 
the mark of Cain, and at times it was worse to be a Russian 
nonconformist than to worship idols or to prison one's 
neighbour. 

The Tsar was smitten with political blindness after the 
first year of his reign, and he insisted all the more on moving 
about among the institutions of his country, modifying 
their working congruously with his whims. On religious 
matters in particular he was narrow-minded. At the time of 
the manifesto the new Russian penal code was being elabo- 
rated, and the section dealing with crimes against faith was 
under discussion. Here the Emperor's supposed mild and 
tolerant spirit was expected to bring about great and desir- 
able changes. But the hope was disappointed. One change 
was made for the better, but only one, and that he assented 
to most reluctantly. An Orthodox believer who desired to 
leave his denomination might thenceforward go abroad and 
there change his religion without fear of punishment, whereas 
formerly he was liable to pains and penalties. That was all. 
But if such a man, being unable to go abroad, should ask a 
Russian Lutheran or Roman Catholic priest to receive him 
into his Church, the minister in question must refuse. To 
comply with the request would entail severe punishment. 

There can be no doubt about the Emperor's personal part 
in hindering his subjects from serving God in their own 
way, for it was vigorous, personal, and direct. Whenever the 
existing institutions or the responsible ministers were 
inclined to loosen the grip of the law on the conscience of the 
individual, the Tsar's veto formed an insuperable impedi- 
ment. Here is one instructive example. The edicts dealing 
with religious misdemeanours being under discussion a 
minority of the Council of the Empire steadily advocated 
toleration; but at every turn his Majesty sided with the 
majority. Once, and only once, the bulk of the members 
favoured a clause which was reasonable and humane; and 
then the Emperor quashed their decision without hesitation. 
The question was, K a Russian who is Orthodox only in 
name and something else — say Lutheran — in reality asks 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 153 

a clergyman of his adopted Church to administer the sacra- 
ment to him on his deathbed, should the minister be 
punishable if he complies? The Council of the Empire, by 
a considerable majority, answered, "No" ; and their argu- 
ments were clear and forcible. So plain was the case that 
even the grand dukes took the side of the majority. But 
the Tsar, putting down his foot, said, "A clergyman who shall 
administer the sacrament of his Church to such a man shall 
be treated as a law-breaker; it is a crime"; and his decision 
received the force of law. As this declaration of the im- 
perial will was made after the manifesto, we know what to 
think of the Emperor's tolerant views as mirrored in that 
document. 

This other instance took place also after the promulgation 
of that ''Magna Charta" of Russian liberty. Baron Uexkull 
von Gildenband proposed that certain sections of the popu- 
lation who had been forced several years ago to join the 
Orthodox Communion, all of them against their will, and 
some even without their knowledge, should now be permitted 
to return to their respective Churches if they chose. Some 
of these people had been Lutherans of the Baltic provinces, 
others had been Uniates of western Russia, i.e.. Catholics 
who, with the liturgy of the Greek Church, hold the beliefs 
of the Latin and are in communion with Rome. It was an 
act, not of magnanimity, but of common justice that was 
here suggested. But, when the general debate was about to 
begin, the Grand Duke Michael, acting in harmony with his 
Majesty's known dispositions, withdrew from the baron his 
right to speak in favour of the proposal, which therefore 
dropped. 

Perhaps the most astoundmg piece of folly for the main- 
tenance of which the Emperor was personally answerable, 
at any rate during that part of his reign which ended with 
the Yalu speculation and the Manchurian campaign, was 
his persecution of a very important section of his own 
Church, the Old Ik'lievcrs. Tlie members of this denomi- 
nation, who were numerous, wealthy, conservative, and 
monarchical, differ only in the veriest trilles from members 



154 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

of the State orthodoxy. And yet the head of the Orthodox 
Church and Tsar of all the Russias, who needed for himself, 
his dynasty, and his Empire all the help he could enlist on 
the side of autocracy and conservatism, harried those Old 
Believers as though they were public enemies. I saw a good 
deal of them at this time, listened to and wrote down their 
complaints against the Emperor, to whom they remained 
loyal in spite of his unwise intolerance. 

A monastery belonging to this sect^ was seized by an 
Orthodox archimandrite who, at the head of fifty Cossacks, 
drove out the monks and took possession of their dwelling. 
One of their bishops, Siluan, protested and was thrown 
into prison. Yet the archimandrite who had won this easy 
victory, not satisfied with his violence against the living, 
also wreaked his spite on the dead. Two Old BeHevers who 
had departed this life in the odour of sanctity, Bishop Job 
and the priest Gregory, were reputed to be in heaven; and 
their bodies were said to be immune from decomposition, a 
fact which is taken to point to their saintship. But the Old 
Believers could not be permitted to have miracles or saints. 
The Orthodox archimandrite, therefore, violated the tombs 
and dug up the bodies. He found the latter really intact, and 
breaking their coffins, he saturated the boards with petroleum 
and then burned the mortal remains of the holy men to 
ashes. ^ The Tsar had been told of all these grievances, but 
he made no sign. 

A tragic story, the hero of which was Bishop Methodius, 
one of the pillars of the Old Believers, may help to complete 
the reader's idea of the cruelty of the system. It, too, was 
brought to the notice of Tsar Nicholas at the time without 
eliciting even an expression of regret. Born in Cheliabinsk, 
Methodius, after having been ordained a priest, zealously 
discharged the duties of his office for fifteen years before he 
was raised to the episcopal see of Tomsk. One day as bishop 
he administered the sacraments to a man who, born in the 

*The Nikolsky Skeet in the Kuban province. 

'This procedure was described in the Grashdanin, 1896, a newspaper 
which was read regularly by the Tsar. 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 155 

State Church, had joined the community of Old BeHevers. 
This was precisely a case of the type discussed in the 
Council of the Empire and so harshly provided for by 
the Emperor himself. Methodius was denounced, arrested, 
tried, found guilty, and condemned to banishment in 
Siberia; and the sentence was carried out with needless 
brutality. With irons on his feet, penned up together with 
murderers and other criminals of the worst type, he was 
sent by etape from prison to prison to the government of 
Yakutsk. Through the intercession of an influential co- 
religionist, he was allowed to stay in the capital of that 
province, but soon afterwards, at the instigation of a digni- 
tary of the State Church, he was banished to Vilyuisk, 
in north-eastern Siberia, a place inhabited by savages. The 
aged bishop — he was seventy-eight years old — was then set 
astride a horse, tied down to the animal, and told that he 
must ride thus to his new place of exile, about seven hundred 
miles distant. 'This sentence is death by torture," said 
Methodius's flock. And they were not mistaken. The old 
man gave up the ghost on the road (1898); but when, 
where, and how he died and was buried has never been 
made known. 

To the wholesome chastenings of criticism the Tsar was 
serenely indifferent. So far as I could learn he never paid 
heed to any strictures by whomsoever uttered, with the sole 
exception of those of his imperial consort and of Rasputin. 
If his repressive measures were conceived without vision 
and executed without ruth, the occasional attempts he made 
at constructive work were inspired by vulgar superstition 
acting upon the intellect of a born dupe. In miracles and 
marvels he took a childish delight, and was as ready to 
believe the messages from the invisible world which the 
spirits sent through M. Philippe in the Crimea as in the 
wonders wrought by the relics of Orthodox monks whose 
names he himself added to the bead-roll of Russian saints. 
His predecessors were more chary of peopling heaven than of 
colonising Siberia. Nicholas I. assented to the canonisa- 
tion of Mitrophan of Voronesh (1832), whose body was 



156 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

found intact after it had lain over a century in its coffin, 
but that was the only beatification made during the reign. 
Alexander II. allowed the Holy Synod to enrich the Church 
with one saint — Tikhon, Bishop of Voronesh (1861); his 
successor did not add even one. But Nicholas 11. not only 
canonised two,^ but he personally ordered one of the candi- 
dates, Seraphim of Saroff, to be proclaimed a saint, in spite 
of the disconcerting fact that his body, although buried for 
only seventy years, was decomposed. The Orthodox Bishop 
Dmitry of TamboflF protested on this ground against the 
beatification as contrary to Church traditions, but he was 
deprived of his see and sent to Vyatka for venturing to dis- 
agree with the Tsar, who held that the preservation of the 
bones, the hair, and the teeth is a sufficient qualification for 
saintship; and he was assured by prophetic monks that 
God would soon work a miracle and restore Seraphim's 
dead body in full. The Deity, however, did not redeem this 
pledge. 

In these circumstances the impatience of the liberal 
leaders waxed aggressive. The action of the war's vicissi- 
tudes on the mood of the whole nation was portentous. And 
so swift was the whirl of events that it became difficult to 
discern the causal nexus between them. What happened one 
day looked as though it had little or nothing to do with the 
occurrence of the eve, and could provide no clue to the 
eventualities of the morrow. There was no coherence in 
things, no union among persons, no centre, no guiding brain. 
The Tsar's ukase was actually forbidden by some governors 
in the provinces, and Nicholas II. frankly approved the pro- 
hibition.2 This and similar follies indicated his belief that 
the autocracy would not stand radical reform, but they also 
incensed the workmen of the capital. Labour in Petersburg 
had for some time previously been organised and electrified 
by the Ukrainian priest, George Gapon, who invited its 

* Theodosius, Archbishop of Chernigoff, canonised 2Sth April, 1896; and 
Seraphim of ^aroflF, canonised 31st July, 1903. 

' Cf. my articles in the North American Review, the Contemporary Re- 
zriew, and the Daily Telegraph at the time. 



REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT 157 

members to follow him in public procession to the Winter 
Palace on the historic 22nd January, to which I afterwards 
gave the name of "Bloody Sunday." The alleged object 
was to lay before the Tsar the needs of the Russian people. 
Gapon was a hare-brained, ignorant, conceited young priest 
who, to use a Russian expression, fancied that the ocean was 
only up to his knees. His ignorance of life was profound and 
his velleity to learn fitful and feeble, and his vanity had 
no bounds. But his personal magnetism, especially when 
addressing a crowd of peasants or artisans, bordered on the 
marvellous. While this hypnotic power was taken by many 
to qualify him for the leadership of men, his intellectual 
shallowness, variations of mood, and utter untrustworthi- 
ness condemned him to lead them to perdition. He was 
possessed of many typical Russian traits, such as a habit of 
morbid introspection and of plangent reverie, a high-strung 
emotional temperament, liability to sudden oscillations 
from the heights of exaltation to the depths of despair, and 
an absence of all sense of measure. He also lalx)ured under 
that kind of ethical Daltonism which hinders some defec- 
tively equipped human beings from discriminating between 
right and wrong, so that every movement that promised the 
delights of leadership carried him for a while along its main 
current. He was emphatically the creature of impulse, and 
altogether devoid of those imposing qualities so often found 
in Russian reformers which go to make a martyr. 



CHAPTER X 

Father Gapon and Azeff 

George Gapon began his public career by joining one of 
those amazing organisations which the bureaucracy in the 
last days of its decline created for its defense. It came of an 
application of the method of exorcising Beelzebub by Beel- 
zebub. The principle and expediency of borrowing some- 
thing from the democratic movements of the west to serve 
as a prop for the autocracy of the east had taken root in the 
fertile brain of Plehve, the organiser, and he set scores of 
agents working at various aspects of this fascinating problem. 
I met several of them. One of these was a certain Zubatoff, 
who organised the Moscow factory hands into a puissant 
association under the unavowed supervision and direction 
of the secret police and in opposition to the inchoate unions 
directed by the socialists. The project was audacious, for 
it included the getting up of economic strikes for higher 
wages and better conditions, which the authorities generally 
brought to an end by taking sides with the workmen against 
the employers. To such expedients was the autocracy 
reduced! I had met Gapon once or twice when calling on 
Bishop Antoninus, who played a part in the religious Philo- 
sophical Society, but I can hardly say that I was acquainted 
with or impressed by him. I distinctly remember, however, 
Witte's indignation at the immorality of Zubatoff 's ex- 
pedient, and at the harm it was inflicting on industry. From 
Moscow bitter complaints had been received from directors 
and owners of factories, and Witte, appealed to as Finance 
Minister, took their part unhesitatingly. "It is not for the 
secret police,'* he once said to me, "to organise strikes 
which are forbidden by law. If strikes are desirable, neces- 
sary, or permissible, they should be left to the men whose 
interests are furthered by them." Gapon at first worked 
under Zubatoff and later alone, and as he confessed to me 

158 



GAPON AND AZEFF 159 

when I pressed the question, he had accepted money from 
the secret poHce, *'but all the money advanced by the 
government," he argued, "came from the people. And 
besides, if I had scrupulously refused it, there would have 
been no great movement now against the regime." His plan 
and justification, as he explained to others and myself, con- 
sisted in his intention to get the factory hands into his power, 
select the most gifted and trustworthy among them, make 
them his agents for propaganda, and then when the auspi- 
cious hour should strike, to lead the compacted working 
class to victory over the autocracy. It was the scheme of 
a visionary who had no eye for realities, the dream of an 
ambitious and eloquent greenhorn. 

The dismissal of four artisans from the Putiloff Works at 
St. Petersburg^ was the occasion that led to the procession 
of Bloody Sunday. Gapon proposed that a demand should 
be made not only for the reinstatement of the men, but also 
for the punishment of the foreman who had sent them away, 
and for guarantees that the existing abnormal relations 
between employers and employed should be so reformed 
as to render such abuses as that complained of impossible 
in the future. If this reasonable request were not complied 
with, he would not, he said, answer for the maintenance of 
public tranquillity. The working men were as clay in his 
hands. His success whenever he addressed them had turned 
his head and clouded his judgment, for vanity was his be- 
setting sin. In a few days his economic demands were rein- 
forced by political pretensions, and he at last exhorted the 
men to follow him to the Winter Palace to see the Tsar and 
lay before him the needs of the entire Russian people. The 
idea was not his own. Who suggested it I do not know for 
certain, but I have some grounds for believing, but not 
enough for asserting, that it had travelled from the far end 
of the globe, whence money was also arriving. 

I called on Gapon a few days before the historic Sunday* 
and being myself acquainted with most of the prominent 

*In December, 1904. 

■The procession took place on 22nd January, 1905. 



160 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

liberals not only in the capital but also in the provinces, I 
felt curious to ascertain more than I then knew about his 
aims, means, qualifications, and antecedents. The last- 
named subject was obviously distasteful to him. He reluc- 
tantly admitted as much as he saw that I knew about himself, 
but his answers generally, as well as the manner in which he 
gave them, left an unpleasant impression in my mind to 
which I gave utterance in my estimate of him published 
next day.^ I felt that such a man was not fitted to lead the 
people in a country like Russia, where punishment for 
abortive revolutions was Draconian, and I never could rid 
myself of the conviction that he was not to be trusted. 

On the eve of the great demonstration I spent the whole 
night in the company of Maxim Gorky, Kedrin, and a 
number of liberals, who were indirectly helping Gapon by 
endeavouring to get the government to keep the troops in 
barracks on the morrow and to induce the Tsar to receive, 
or send some one to receive, a delegation of the working men. 
Witte, who, although not in power, was eager to canalise 
the current and render it harmless, telephoned to the re- 
sponsible minister, his friend and mine. Prince Sviatopolk 
Mirsky, and besought him to intercede with the monarch. 
To no purpose. Mirsky, who was a humane, straight, 
honourable man, did everything he could to have the 
request complied with, but without result. I well remember 
Witte's last words to Mirsky at the telephone an hour after 
midnight: ''Are you really aware how serious the move- 
ment is, and how tragic the consequences of your refusal 
may be?" And the answer came: 'T am alive to all that, 
but I can do nothing to prevent it. The matter is not in my 
hands." The delegation then withdrew. Nobody in authority 
could be discovered in the capital that night who would con- 
fess to having any voice in shaping the events of the morrow. 
Blind fate seemed to be standing at the wheel. 

On the Sunday morning I went out to see the demonstra- 
tion and was very nearly shot by the Cossacks who fired on a 
body of working men and women a few yards from Witte's 

*In the Daily Telegraph, 



GAPON AND AZEFF 161 

house after having hurriedly warned me to vacate the ground 
between them and the crowd. The people, who were un- 
armed and peaceful, but excited and wound up by Gapon, 
were fired upon without ruth.^ It would have been possible 
for the Emperor or a grand duke to conciliate them, or for 
a few hundred policemen to disperse them with truncheons, 
but counsels of wisdom were rejected, possibly because 
Witte who tendered them was disliked by the Tsar. 

Military specialists afterwards assured me that if the 
workmen, who reached the neighbourhood of the empty 
Winter Palace, had been led by a resolute chief they might 
have occupied it without the loss of a man and perhaps 
turned the riot into a revolution.^ I do not share this view, 
which I record as interesting. For the demonstration was a 
mad freak. The working men were unarmed, their leader 
was self-seeking and pacific, the groups, scattered all over 
the city, could not be concentrated, and the attitude of the 
crowd was such that the soldiers were certain to disperse it 
without a serious effort. This was known to Gorky, Kedrin, 
and myself the night before. The priest failed to realise it. 

The Cossacks stationed near the bridges and at other 
points fired upon the advancing groups and a massacre 
ensued. The number of victims as given by some English 
and foreign papers amounted to thousands; in reality the 
killed did not exceed seventy odd, nor the wounded 240. 

Father Gapon in person led a numerous body of men 
from a part of the city far distant from the Winter Palace, 
and before they had made much progress they were stopped 
by the troops who opened fire. Gapon's life was in danger 
for a while, but he lay fiat in the snow enveloped in his heavy 
fur coat during the firing. One of his friends fell dead by his 
side. Having escaped the same fate he was taken to a place 
of safety by a devoted friend, the engineer Ruthenl)erg, a 
member of a revolutionary society. It came about in this way. 

After the third volley the silence was broken only by the 

* I described the events of these days in telegrams of many columns in 
length which appeared in the Daily Tclc<;raph. 
*The Novoye Vrcmya also put forward this thesis. 



162 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

cries and moans of the wounded, who lay wriggling or wincing 
in the mottled snow. Ruthenberg raised his head cautiously, 
looked round at the prostrate bodies, and seeing beside him 
the burly figure of the cleric curled up in the snow, nudged 
him violently. From the capacious fur mantle Gapon's 
head was lifted slowly. "Are you alive, father?" "Yes." 
"Shall we get away from here?" "By all means." And 
they went. Hardly had they entered a courtyard hard by 
when Gapon theatrically exclaimed, "There's no longer a 
God, there's no longer a Tsar." And yet within a twelve- 
month he was secretly assuring the authorities that his 
veneration for the Tsar was and always had been profound 
— in fact, it came immediately after his love for God. 

The engineer, eager to save the priest's life as the most 
precious thing in that motley crowd, took away all the com- 
promising documents in Gapon's possession and asked 
whether he might also relieve him of his long tell-tale hair. 
The priest assented. Ruthenberg then took out his clasp 
knife for the purpose. It was the knife that contained a pair 
of scissors and was to be employed once again on Gapon at 
the close of his career and his life and by the same engineer. 
Ruthenberg began the operation as though it were the cere- 
mony of conferring upon a novice the dignity of monkhood. 
And the working men, who literally worshipped their leader, 
clustered round the pair and stretched forth their hands for the 
locks of the precious hair which they received reverently with 
bared and bowed heads as though an awe-inspiring sacra- 
ment were being administered. And as they took it, they 
muttered, "It is holy." Those locks of Gapon's hair were 
treasured up by the working men and their families as sacred 
relics^ — for a twelvemonth and a day. From the moment 
Gapon rose from the ground he was another man in more 
than one sense of the term. Instead of the enthusiastic 
leader who had recoiled from no danger he was in mortal 
terror of being arrested and hanged. Of hanging he had a 
supernatural dread. It might have been a presentiment. 

I saw him that same evening. He came disguised to the 
*Cf. Byloye (in Russian), Nos. 11-12, p. 3$. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 163 

Economic Society where a meeting was being held of the 
intelligentsia, and his unbridled vanity moved him to deliver 
an address, having first had himself introduced to the 
audience as a friend of Father Gapon's. He had nothing 
of interest to tell his audience, but if I remember right he 
asked that the workmen should be supplied with firearms 
in order to rebel with success. The historic procession 
imparted new vigour to the popular movement and the 
massacre of the unarmed citizens inflicted enormous damage 
on the cause of the autocracy. 

The remainder of Gapon's history had best find a place 
here. His friend, the engineer Ruthenberg, who saved his 
life near the Narva Gates, stood by him helpfully with 
counsel, money, refuge, friends, until he had him safe in 
Geneva. There and in Paris Gapon's vanity was fed and 
fostered by the reverence with which the Russian colony 
received him. He formally joined the socialists, expecting 
to rise to still greater fame and break the record he had 
already attained. A lady who had been in Petersburg and 
on her return from Russia found Gapon still idle and fret- 
ting, cheered him up with the information that the workmen 
of his party in the capital literally adored him and were 
about to open a subscription to raise a monument to him 
during his life. These tidings completely upset his mental 
balance. He communicated them to every one he met, 
generally with the comment : *Tt is without parallel in 
history." His personal magnetism, which drew and capti- 
vated many of those who came under his influence, enabled 
him to live in idleness abroad, supported either by the party 
or by individuals, until he published the story of his life, for 
which he is said to have received a thousand pounds. A 
measure of his powers of suggestion was afforded by the 
ease with which he talked over a certain Russian with whom 
he became acquainted abroad into making him a present 
of fifty thousand francs^ "to organise the workmen of 

^ The man who gave the money was SokofF. There were other weahhy 
Russians who, belonging to no revohitionary party, replenished the funds 
of the social democrats or social revolutionists, and at least one of these 
gave as much as a hundred thousand pounds. 



164 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Petersburg." This money he is alleged to have spent 
entirely on himself, and as soon as the party to which he now 
belonged heard of what he had done and how he had accom- 
plished it they asked him to resign. It is worth noting as a 
characteristic of the man that about that time, and before 
six months had elapsed since the events of Bloody Sunday, 
Gapon had again resumed secret relations with the Russian 
Department of Police.^ When in Finland later on, a certain 
captain remarked to him, "Russia has had her Gapon, but now 
she needs a Napoleon." He rejoined, *'How do you know that 
that Russian Napoleon is not standing before you now?" 

I was once invited to dinner near London by a well-known 
Russian revolutionist who enjoys an enviable reputation in 
the higher walks of life. I accepted gratefully. Before the 
day had come, however, I received another letter informing 
me that Father Gapon would be the honoured guest of the 
evening, whereupon I begged to be excused, for I felt an 
inexplicable antipathy to the man. Later on when he had 
returned in secret to Russia^ he sent a message to ask me 
whether I would meet him. He also apologised for troubling 
one with whom he could hardly say that he was acquainted, 
but my close relations with the Prime Minister warranted 
him, he thought, in taking this unwonted step. I declined 
to see Gapon on the ground that my intimacy with the 
Premier would not allow me to enter into relations with an 
enemy, real or alleged, of the government without first in- 
forming its chief and obtaining his assent. Gapon sent again 
to request me to tell Witte that he was back in St. Petersburg 
and had something of importance to say. 

I brought the matter up that same night after dinner. 
Witte and I were talking about various people when I asked 
him his opinion of Gapon, and then inquired when he had 
last heard of him. "And where is he now?" I queried. 
"He is still abroad, I suppose." I remarked that to my 
knowledge he was in the Russian capital. At first the states- 

* Cf. Byloye, Nos. 11-12, p. 44. 

' I have forgotten the date and my dairies are inaccessible owing to the 
war. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 165 

man thought I was joking. When he saw that I could tell 
where the priest was to be found he requested me to give 
him Gapon's address. I did not possess it, nor would I have 
given it unconditionally if I had had it. I told him, however, 
how he could get into communication with him, but only- 
after he had first promised me not to allow him to be arrested. 
Witte apprised me subsequently that he had met his col- 
league, Durnovo, Minister of the Interior, next day, and that 
Durnovo had casually mentioned Gapon's name to him. 
**Gapon is here," said Witte. *'Are you certain?" "Quite 
certain." "Then I must have the scoundrel arrested." "No, 
no, you must promise not to touch him. I have given my 
word. I will see to it that he leaves the country." Durnovo 
reluctantly agreed to give Gapon twenty-four or forty-eight 
hours' grace, and Witte sent him the necessary money from 
his own purse to enable him to quit Russia.^ 

I did not know exactly when Gapon entered into relations 
with Ratchkoffsky, the head of the Political Police of all 
Russia, who, after having been dismissed for sending a true 
report about the shady antecedents of the Tsar's first 
favourite, the French table-rapper, Philippe, was reinstated 
as the cleverest, most resourceful, and most subtle organiser 
of anti-revolutionary counter-mines in the Tsardom. And 
judging by what he actually accomplished he deserved this 
reputation. I, who for years was Witte's most intimate friend, 
met him two or three times at the statesman's house and was 
surprised to note that he spoke Russian with a foreign accent 
and expressed himself slowly, hesitatingly, as though he were 
seeking for words. The minister, who was always outspoken 
to me when characterising the people he received and had 
warned me in advance to keep clear of several because he 
suspected them of being spies or blackmailers, expressed 
himself thus about RatchkofYsky : "He is well worth know- 
ing, lie has an extraordinary, subtle mind. The way he gets 
round the anarchists is simply amazing." But 1 fought shy 
of Ratchkoffsky, and he of me. He probably remembered 

' I'his would go to show that Gapon's relations with the police had not 
>ct been regulated, or else were not known to the minister. 



166 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

my dossier. Anyhow, I have no clear-cut impression of 
anything but his exterior and his small talk and I found 
neither attractive. 

I have since learned that Gapon had become Ratch- 
koffsky's paid agent some time in the first half of February, 
1906,^ that he had written a letter of repentance and promise 
of amendment to the Home Secretary, Durnovo, and had 
undertaken to seduce and win over to the secret service his 
friend, the engineer Ruthenberg; and that was his undoing. 
Ratchkoffsky handled Gapon in a masterly way, flattering 
him to the top of his bent until the priest began to imagine 
that he was about to become one of Russia's greatest men. 
Gapon, on his part, retracted all his former opinions, brand- 
marked his action of Bloody Sunday, and announced his 
resolve to make amends for all his former wickedness. That 
was exactly what the Police Director wanted — to bedraggle 
the idol of the people with mud and to plunge him in the 
lowest depths of degradation. It was with this object and 
probably with the ulterior aim of sending the priest to his 
death that Ratchkoffsky set him the task of disaffecting 
Ruthenberg to the revolutionary movement and securing 
his services as a spy. Ratchkoffsky well knew from Azeff 
that the engineer had nothing new to reveal, and also that 
he would turn upon his tempter. Anyhow, it was the per- 
sistent effort to achieve that impossible and useless feat that 
ruined the fickle priest. There is something almost amusing 
in the naivete with which Gapon, when seeking to lure his 
friend and saviour, tells of the friendly turn he had done 
him in his talks with the head of the political police. *At 
first, you know, Ratchkoffsky did not trust you, but when I 
assured him that you were straight and honest, and that I 
would vouch for you, he was easy in mind!" A certificate 
of straightness and honesty from the traitor for the man 
whom he hopes to render disloyal comes to a westerner with 
an anarchist flavour. 

* Gapon and Ratchkoffsky had met in January once or twice, and also in 
early February, 1906. Whether the Minister Durnovo was aware of this 
I am unable to say. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 167 

Nothing is more characteristic of the degree of vice and 
corruption to which the autocracy, and not the autocracy 
only, had sunk at the beginning of the century than the 
cynicism with which assassination, cold-blooded treachery, 
shameless perjury, and all the abominations of applied 
Machiavellism pushed to its uttermost extremes, were dis- 
cussed and employed by the State and also by its foes. All 
restraints and checks were gone. The Tsar's government 
employed unprincipled scoundrels who, like Azeff, cajoled 
young men into a secret society, set them to commit das- 
tardly crimes, and then delivered them up to death, penal 
servitude, or exile, and on the other hand the revolutionary 
parties were served by the self -same ruffians who proscribed 
and murdered grand dukes, ministers, generals. And the 
imperial government, which knew that such murders as 
those of Plehve and of the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke 
Sergius, had been planned and organised by the well-paid 
State servant Azeff, not only allowed him to remain in its 
employ, but continued to pay him royally. These things 
enable one to gauge the depths to which moral gangrene 
had eaten into the organism before it finally collapsed. 
Tsarism was being developed to its extreme consequences. 

What could be more artless or illuminating than the 
following entry made by the engineer Ruthenberg in his 
diary? "February, 1906. I found nobody in Petersburg. 
Having learned that Azefif was in Seyversk I repaired thither. 
I arrived by the first morning train, about 7 a.m. on the nth 
or 1 2th February. I narrated everything to AzefF ^ (about 
Gapon's treason). I told him that as a member of the party 
I do not consider that I have the right to take any measures 
on my own initiative, so I await instructions from the 
Central Committee. Azeff was astonished and disgusted 
at what I had recounted. It was his opinion that Gapon 
should be done to death like a poisonous viper. In order to 

* AzefT was the notorious revolutionary organiser and at the same time 
the great police spy — a living synthesis of contradictions. What Ruthcn- 
herg told AzefT were the suspicious admissions made to him by Gapon 
who had already begun the work of seduction. 



168 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

accomplish this I must ask him to meet me, drive out with 
him in the evening, taking my own sleigh to the Krestoffsky 
Garden,^ remain there to supper and stay late — in fact until 
everybody is gone — then drive in the same conveyance to 
the wood, plunge a knife into Gapon's back, and throw his 
body out of the sleigh. The same morning . . . Subbotin 
arrived ... In essentials he shared Azeff's opinion that 
Gapon must be killed." . . . Another council of four was 
held next day and opinions were divided, one member 
insisting on the murder of Azeff alone and the others 
advocating a meeting of Ruthenberg, Gapon, and Ratch- 
koffsky at which the engineer should also kill the other two. 

Ruthenberg did not venture to assassinate Gapon, who 
was literally idolised by the working men, until he could get 
their assent. In order to obtain this it behoved him, in his 
own interest, first to prove the priest's guilt. With this 
object in view he took Gapon out in a sleigh, the driver of 
which was one of the factory hands disguised, who was told 
in advance to keep his ears pricked, listen to the conversa- 
tion, and report it faithfully to his comrades. The talk 
consisted of Ruthenberg' s various objections to Gapon's 
proposal that he should meet Ratchkoffsky and betray his 
party, and of Gapon's detailed answers and persuasive pleas. 
The priest had at first mentioned ten thousand pounds as 
the reward which the engineer might expect for his treason, 
but was afterwards obliged to confess that the head of the 
political police had refused to pay more than one quarter of 
this sum. 

Naturally the talk was very open, the names of persons 
being clearly pronounced by Ruthenberg so that the driver 
heard enough to dispel his doubts. He and his comrades 
having subsequently talked the matter over, decided at the 
first opportunity to seize Gapon, disarm, try, and execute 
him. And for these purposes a wooden house was hired 
some ten or twelve miles outside the capital, on the way to 
the Finnish frontier, into which he was to be inveigled. It 

*A place of amusement on one of the islands, where officers and bons 
vivants used to sup, listen to gypsy songs, and spend most of the night. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 169 

was situated in a little village of wooden houses used as 
summer dwellings by the poorer middle class of the capital 
and left empty in winter. Gapon, however, at first refused 
to leave Petersburg under any circumstances, but finally 
accepted Ruthenberg's invitation and went without even 
taking the revolver which he had never before left behind. 
After some conversation with the engineer the pair ap- 
proached the shanty, in which a number of workmen were 
secretly waiting to discharge the functions of judges and 
executioners. 

"Is there anybody in the house?" asked Gapon as they 
drew near to the dismal-looking frail, wooden structure in 
the deserted snow-covered village. "Nobody," replied his 
friend. "Bravo!" rejoined the priest, "you always manage 
to get a place where even a dog would not scent your 
presence." The members of the improvised areopagus were 
meanwhile waiting in a little backroom on the upper story, 
and by way of disarming suspicion the door had been shut 
and a padlock hung outside as though it had remained locked 
ever since the end of summer when all these shabby "villas" 
are vacated. The plan was for Ruthenberg and Gapon to 
enter this particular room where the priest would be dis- 
armed, bound, and tried. But Gapon, arriving first, went 
into the larger room, took off his fur coat, flopped heavily 
down on the sofa, and began to chatter away more cynically 
than ever before, fancying that no one but his friend could 
hear him, whereas his every word was audible to the men 
next door. "Why ever won't you come to terms?" he 
began; "25,000 roubles is a respectable sum." "Yes, yes, 
but in Moscow you told me that Ratchkofifsky had offered 
100,000." And so more and more compromising answers 
were elicited by the engineer's tricky questions. For example, 
the latter objected that if he betrayed his comrades they 
would be hanged and he therefore recoiled from the act. 
Gapon urged that once the money was paid by the authori- 
ties, the two could then warn their comrades to escape and 
thus save the lambs and feed the wolves. His friend then 
insisted that this was not feasible because they would be 



170 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

"shadowed" by Ratchkoffsky's detectives and all of them 
hanged. ''Oh, well, we will arrange their escape somehow," 
remarked the ex-priest. "Perhaps part might get away," 
said Ruthenberg, "but they'll surely catch and hang the 
rest." "That would be a pity," observed Gapon. And so 
the fateful dialogue ran on. 

In this way the wretched man was tempted and played 
with for the space of about half an hour, until he had laid 
bare all his crimes against the men who had followed him 
and braved death under his leadership and had denied God 
and the Tsar at his bidding a little over a year before. 
Towards the close of this oblique cross-examination the 
engineer struck out a new line in order to reach a climax. 
"What would become of you if the workmen, say only those 
of your own section, got wind of your relations with Ratch- 
koffsky?" "They know nothing about that, and if they 
heard anything I would make them believe that I was doing 
it for their own good." "Yes, but suppose they were to 
discover all that I know about you? . . . that you betrayed 
me and even undertook to seduce me and enlist me among 
the provocateurs and through me to betray the militant 
organisation, and that you sent a letter of repentance to 
Durnovo? What then?" "Nobody knows those things, 
nobody can ever find them out." "But suppose I myself 
were to publish them?" "Oh, of course you would never do 
such a thing. ..." Then having meditated a while, "And 
if you did I would write to the papers and say you had gone 
mad and that I knew nothing of those things. Besides, you 
possess no documents, no witnesses to bear them out. There 
isn't the shadow of a doubt that it is I whom they would 
believe." ^ 

After this they moved out of the room. Behind a door 
Gapon came upon an ear witness, was terrified, and wanted 
to kill him on the spot. Thereupon Ruthenberg went to 
the door of the little room, pushed it open, and turning to 
the priest exclaimed, "Look! there are my witnesses!" 
Gapon, turning his gaze upon the man whom he had been 
*Cf. Byloye, Nos. 11-12, p. 89. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 171 

talking to as his second self, fell on his knees, and exclaimed, 
"Martin,^ Martin !" 'There's no Martin here for you !" 
exclaimed a voice. The workmen, who had with difficulty 
repressed their fury during Gapon's unwitting self-accusa- 
tion, threw themselves fiercely upon him now and pinned 
him to the floor. Then they dragged him into the adjoining 
room. Ruthenberg covered his face with his hands and went 
out. The first impulse of the men was to shoot the traitor. 
But he tore himself from their clutches in the strength of 
his despair and adjured them to have mercy. ''Brothers, 
brothers!" he implored them. "We are not your brothers. 
Ratchkoflfsky is your brother." "Brothers, I swear to you 
that I did it for the sake of an idea . . ." "Yes, we have 
just heard your ideas. We know them now." "Comrades, 
in the name of the past, forgive me ... in the name of the 
past." But the men went on tying his hands and feet in 
silence. "Brothers! Spare me. Remember the links that 
bind us to each other." "That's exactly why you deserve 
to die," one of the men exclaimed. "You sold our blood 
to the secret police and you merit death." . . . And con- 
gruously with an unspoken accord they threw the noose over 
his head on to his neck and pulled him over to an iron hook 
which had been driven into the clothes-rack. 

Gapon, already choking and gasping, croaked out, 
"Brothers . . . darlings . . . stop! . . . Let me say a 
last word!" . . . "String him up!" commanded one of 
the men who had walked with Gapon in the procession of 
Bloody Sunday. But another comrade interposed, saying, 
"Let him have his last word as he asks for it. Perhaps we 
may learn something important." . . . The pressure of the 
cord round his neck was eased and Gapon spoke, "Brothers! 
. . . Have mercy . . . Dear ones . . . Forgive me . . . 
For the sake of bygone times." . . . But the workmen 
jerked the cord and Gapon hung powerless. A few minutes 
later he was dead. The shadows of evening were falling. 

* Martin was Ruthenbcrg's adopted pseudonym in the revolutionary 
society. The story of Gapon's last moments I have told in the exact words 
of Ruthenberg himself and of one of the workmen who executed the priest. 



172 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

The workmen, gloomy and stem, went out of the room 
one after the other on to the terrace where Ruthenberg stood. 
He was trembUng all over from an attack of nerves. **Is it 
finished?" he asked. All were silent. *'You should search 
him now," he said. And they all went back to the room 
again where Gapon's corpse was hanging. They searched 
him and found various papers in his pockets. . . . Ruthen- 
berg said, "You ought to cover his face. Cut the cord and 
cover up his face." He took from his own pocket and handed 
me a clasp knife — writes a workman — which contained a 
pair of small, collapsible scissors. "It was with these very 
scissors," he remarked, "that I cut his hair on that day . . . 
the 22nd January . . . and now it is with the same scissors 
that" . . . but he did not complete the sentence and went 
out of the dismal room.^ 

In this dramatic manner poetic justice was done and the 
idol of the people was covered with infamy. 

Azeff, the paid spy of the government and unmatched 
organiser of revolutionary murders, was a party to this execu- 
tion. A word from him would have stopped or retarded it. 
That he informed his chief Ratchkoffsky of what was 
planned is most probable. For Gapon, after his meeting 
with Ruthenberg at the fatal village of Ozerky, was to have 
returned and given Ratchkoffsky an account of what took 
place. And as he did not return the conclusion that he had 
been put to death was almost unavoidable. Yet Gapon's 
body was allowed to lie for weeks in the empty house where 
it had fallen, probably because Ratchkoffsky was anxious 
that the crime should be discovered as late as possible. From 
the outset the Police Director knew that Gapon had nothing 
of importance to reveal and was perfectly useless as a spy, 
because the revolutionists had long ceased to trust him. 
What he wanted, therefore, was first to discredit the popular 
hero of Bloody Sunday — which he had already done — and 
then to get the revolutionists to give him a receipt for the 
work by putting their ex-hero to death ignominiously. Con- 
ception and execution were worthy of the greatest of Russia's 
*Cf. Byloye, Nos. 11-12, p. 119. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 173 

secret police organisers. They were also characteristic of 
the government, the regime, and the epoch. 

As soon as I received tidings of Gapon*s death ^ I asked 
Witte whether it was true. He seemed greatly perturbed 
and only said, 'T cannot credit it. But I will find out at 
once and let you know." The next morning as he and I went 
in to lunch together he said, 'T am sorry to say that Gapon 
has been put to death. Your information was correct. Please 
say nothing about it to any one. What a strange man he was !" 
He then told me the whole story of Gapon as far as he knew 
it and I wrote it down to his dictation. 

Thus the system of government at the outset of the 
twentieth century was essentially what Ivan the Terrible 
had made it in the sixteenth — an agency independent of the 
nation, with interests and aims of its own which often ran 
counter to those of the people, an organism which had the 
strongest motives for keeping the bulk of Russians in intel- 
lectual darkness, political subjection, and in the plague-pol- 
luted gloom of moral degradation. And now that the girders 
and joists of the State structure were bending and giving way 
under the battering shocks of terrorists who lived and died 
for abstractions, the props by which the fabric was being 
supported were supplied by Ratchkoffsky, Gapon, Azeff, 
Tennenbaum, and such-like beings whose very breath shed 
poison and from whose infamous deeds some of the worst 
criminals of the west would have recoiled. By the year of 
the abortive revolution, which foreboded the fall of the 
autocracy, the soul of the ruling class in the Tsardom was 
encrusted round with foul leprous stains and the moral 
atmosphere of the nation permeated with corrosive vapour. 
Brother could no longer confide in brother nor parents in 
their sons, so impregnated had the air become with suspicion 
and mistrust. 

Take as a typical example the case of the notorious AzefF. 
A great clumsy, brawny fellow with a big Marat-like head, 
and uncommonly low forehead, eyes that seemed starting from 

* As my diaries are no longer accessible, I am unable to determine the 
exact date. 



174 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

their sockets, thick lips, very high cheek bones, and a coarse, 
sensual look, he was early taken in hand by the Department 
of the Political Police and introduced into the holy of 
holies of the revolutionary party, there to weave plots that 
made men shudder, to enlist intrepid, clever young men — 
the pick of Russia's youth — to assign to them parts in 
political murders, and to have them arrested on the eve of 
their realisation and sent to the gallows, Siberia, or a horrible 
prison. The police alone being unable to cope with the 
multitude of patriotic lads who, stirred by the spectacle of 
their country's woes, and inspired by the vision of its future 
bliss, rose up against the accursed system, created the role of 
the agent provocateur. Ratchkoffsky raised it to the dignity 
of an art. The number of provocateurs was great, but the 
king of them all was Yevno Azeff, known also as the *Tat 
One." The story of the exploits of this miscreant would fill 
a large volume. The names of his victims would suffice for 
a national martyrology. The authority he enjoyed with the 
militant revolutionists on the one hand, and with the Tsar's 
bureaucratic defenders on the other hand, constitutes a 
psychological wonder. For although the man had no such 
charm of person or magic of language as Gapon possessed, 
and was physically repellent over and above, he was so 
highly esteemed and trusted by both sides that for years 
the central committee of the revolutionists refused to enter- 
tain the growing suspicions of certain of his colleagues, or to 
take notice of the downright denunciations that came from 
the Department of the Political Police itself, while the Tsar's 
government, even after it had been proven that Azeff was the 
double-dyed scoundrel who had organised the successful 
plot against Plehve and the Grand Duke Sergius, not only 
refused to bring him to trial or otherwise punish him, but 
continued to pay him largely and to keep him in their em- 
ployment. Azeff was a Janus, and each of his two faces 
possessed the power of fascinating the beholder. 

Azeff accepted two influential posts in the revolutionary 
camp: he was a member of the central committee of the 
Social Revolutionary Party, and he was also head of the 



GAPON AND AZEFF 175 

militant organisation, so that practically everything was 
thought out, organised, and its execution supervised by 
him. For seven or eight consecutive years all the threads 
of the revolutionary movement passed through his blood- 
stained hands; he knew personally every leading con- 
spirator in the province, and shaped every great collective 
terrorist act. It is self-evident that the revolutionists, whose 
watchfulness and shrewdness need no eulogium, would not 
have maintained him in this position of trust if they had not 
had absolute confidence in his zeal for the cause and his re- 
sourcefulness. It is no less clear that he must have justified 
this confidence by concrete acts. These two conclusions are 
borne out by well-established facts. Of these evidences of 
Azeff's devotion one of the most resonant and fruitful was 
the death of Plehve, of which I by chance was a witness. 
This versatile ruffian carefully laid his plans for the murder 
of the minister in whom the brightest hopes of the auto- 
cracy were then centred and who was paying him for pro- 
tection against terrorist plots. It is worth noting by the way 
that Plehve was one of the highest types of the champions 
of Tsarism and a statesman of no mean order. True, the 
material in which he worked and the conditions which he 
was forced to accept made it not only impossible for him 
to achieve great palpable results, but obliged him either to 
abandon the task or to have recourse to the most infamous 
devices ever employed by a civilised ruler of men. And yet 
ethically Plehve was neither worse nor better than the 
common run of his class. Intellectually indeed he was far 
and away their superior. But the system which he had to 
bolster up was already so putrid that it could be upheld only 
by communicating its rottenness to the forces that were 
preparing to attack it. Any powerful shock would, it seemed 
to him and to many of his fellow-workers, overthrow the 
dynasty, the regime, and the entire ordering of the political 
community. The diversion which he had striven to create 
by the Manchurian campaign was harming in lieu of help- 
ing the autocracy. For the first time all Russia was combin- 
ing against the Tsarist State, and any day a far-resonant 



176 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

crime of the terrorists might prove the precipitating event 
that would lead to its overthrow. To hinder this the surest 
way, as it seemed to Plehve, would be to contaminate 
the terrorists with the canker from which the State was 
suffering. In this way the system assimiliated its servants 
and stamped them with the hall-mark of its own ethical 
quality. 

Plehve was blown to pieces in my pressence, and forthwith 
Azeff became a demi-god in the eyes of his comrades and a 
future saviour in the eyes of the government. Unable to 
satisfy both masters at once, he soon afterwards plotted the 
death of the Tsar's uncle and had him too blown to pieces. 
It is not surprising, therefore, that when in the latter half of 
the year 1905 he was anonymously denounced to one of the 
terrorists as an agent of the political police the revolutionary 
committee dismissed the charge with supreme contempt. 
And yet the denunciation had come in the shape of a letter 
sent ^ by an unnamed official of the Department of the 
Secret Police ^ in Petersburg. Moreover, it consisted not 
merely in an accusation uttered without evidence; it made 
two definite statements of interest to the terrorists, which 
on inquiry turned out to be true, and ought therefore to 
have stimulated curiosity about the third. It alleged that 
among the members of the committee were two agents pro- 
vocateurs, of whom one was T., who had recently returned 
from Siberia, where he had lived in banishment, and that 
the other was commonly known by either of his two nick- 
names, "the Fat One" or "Ivan Nikolayevitch." The 
indictment actually specified some of the denunciations 
which each of the two men had made against his comrades, 
and it also described certain details by which they might be 
identified. It asserted, for example, that "the Fat One" 
had recently spent a fortnight in Moscow imder the false 
name of Vilenkin. This last allegation was both true and 
disquieting. 

The member of the committee who had received this 
letter showed it at once to Azeff, who grew pale and excited, 
*In August, 1905. "Okhranka. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 177 

and exclaimed, *'T. is Tataroff, and A. is, of course, myself, 
Azeff.'* He decided to repair to Moscow without delay, 
where he opened his mind to another member of the party, 
who comforted him by expressing his implicit trust in his 
loyalty and zeal. It was obvious, this comforter said, that 
Ratchkoffsky and the government were burning to deprive 
the revolutionists of the soul of their organisation, of the 
man who had removed first Plehve anl then the Grand 
Duke Sergius, and given an irresistible impetus to things 
political which would carry Russia far towards her goal. 
Another member of the party, however, brooded over the 
accusation, and was deeply impressed by the fact that Azeff's 
false name was known to the police — for that could only 
mean either that somebody had informed against him — and 
then why did the police not arrest him? — or else that he 
himself had informed the police, and then he was their 
agent. Other explanation there could be none. And yet . . . 
The second thing that struck this comrade was that the 
inquiry opened into the case against Tataroff showed that 
the anonymous writer had told the truth, for the accusation 
was proved and the traitor was duly put to death by the 
organisation. Now if one of the two denounced members 
was guilty, was not the presumption grounded that the 
other was equally so? But the committee scouted the 
notion as an insult. Had not Azeff planned the murder of 
Plehve and the grand duke? And if so, what more need be 
said? No government would keep an active terrorist like 
him in its employ. 

In the spring of 1906 in revolutionary circles the rumour 
was rife that an attempt would shortly be made on the life 
of Admiral Dubassoff, with whom I was then and after- 
wards on friendly terms. A fortnight before the date fixed, 
a female member of the revolutionary party from Moscow 
sought out the mistrustful meml:>er of the organisation ^ 
and narrated a curious incident. She told him that the 

* I am quotinf? from his own account, cf. Byloye. o-io, p. lor, also from 
a pamphlet entitled "The Responsibility of the Tsar," by Vlad. Burtzcflf 
(in Russian), 1910, pp. 11 fol. 



178 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

conspirators were at their posts the day before when they 
were suddenly encircled by spies, so that it needed all their 
presence of mind and energy to make good their escape. 
Consequently the police knew all about the conspiracy, and 
the conspirators were in its power. The man to whom this 
fact was communicated ascribed the laying of the spy trap 
to Azeff, who intended to make use of the plot against 
Dubassoff's life for the ruin of a large number of the hardiest 
terrorists. He was therefore in favour of an inquiry. But 
the terrorists preferred to wait and see. Azeff was now on 
his mettle, and eight or ten days later the attempt on the 
admiral's life did take place; he was wounded and de- 
prived of his hearing, and his aide-de-camp, Count Konov- 
nitzin, was killed outright. Azeff, who was hard by during 
the bomb-throwing, was arrested by the police, but he 
showed them his passe-partout and they set him at liberty 
at once. It is difficult to realise that such infamies as these 
were tolerated, nay, deliberately practised, by civilised Chris- 
tian men as methods of educating their 180,000,000 wards. 
In the autumn of 1906 Azeff took offence at some remarks 
made by a comrade, and laying down his functions for a 
time went abroad. During his absence the terrorists im- 
proved the occasion and killed more men of note in the 
administration in one month than they had slain in six 
months of his tenure of office. And this difference was duly 
noted by two suspicious comrades, who drew their own 
conclusions. As soon as Azeff returned ^ he resumed his 
functions, reorganised the central board, went to Finland, and 
left instructions that every young member coming from the 
provinces for advice or work from him should repair thither. 
These instructions, which aroused surprise, were carried 
out. There the workers were cordially received and told 
what was expected of them, and when they returned they 
were arrested on the Finnish frontier by the Russian police 
and handed over to the gaoler or the hangman. A large 
number of young men were caught in this way and im- 
jnobilised by imprisonment or death. After a time the 
*Iji the beginning of 1907. 



GAPON AND AZEFF 179 

provincial terrorist chiefs refused to repair to Finland, even 
when Azeff himself sent for them. Some of his mistrustful 
colleagues now felt surer of their ground. 

But it was not until February, 1908, that the eyes of the 
committee men began to be opened to the true nature of 
Azeff's activity. It came about in this way. A young man 
in a provincial town learned from an intimate friend who 
was in the service of the secret police that there was an 
agent provocateur in the committee whose name was Azeff. 
The youth at once set out for Finland and apprised the 
committee of what he had heard. But he was sharply bidden 
to return whence he had come and to mind his own business 
in future. A few days later a large number of arrests were 
made by the government, which was impolitic enough to 
announce that they had received detailed information com- 
promising all those who had been apprehended. Who had 
given the information? was the question that naturally 
presented itself to those who were most nearly concerned. 
"It must have been Azeff," said one who knew him, but he 
honestly admitted that he was merely guessing. The others 
refused to entertain the thought. Then said the first, "As 
our young men are all falling into the hands of the govern- 
ment, why does not Azeff at least suspend the reign of 
terror must be continued. The honour of Russia demands 
be opposed to any such suspension. He had said, "The 
terror must be continued. The honour of Russia demands 
it." And it was continued. 

His mistrustful comrades, and Burtzeff in particular, 
brooded over these things and resolved to bide their time 
and watch for their opportunity. As an agent provocateur 
one of Azeff's functions was to hatch grandiose plots from 
time to time which required the services of numerous con- 
spirators, to assign to each one his part, and to allow the 
preparations to be completed and generally the day to dawn 
on which the execution was to take place. This was an 
essential condition. Then, and not before, the secret police 
were to swoop down on the conspirators, seize the ring- 
leaders red-handed, track the others to the houses of their 



180 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

friends, and make an enormous haul. In this way during j 
the first four years that followed the abortive revolution of j 
1905 the executioner was kept continually busy. Thousands 
of young men, enterprising, fearless, and easily led, were 
gathered together in groups and flung to the hangman. 
Azeff would explain these mishaps to his comrades as 
consequences of the clumsiness of one or other of the 
conspirators, of their neglect to carry out his instructions, | 
of their consequent imprudence in deed or word. It was 
always they who were to blame, and it was his part to feel 
grieved to death at their foolishness. His judgments on 
his victims were invariably harsh. They themselves were 
always at fault. His conduct towards the others was 
equally callous and cruel. In the intervals between these 
frequent harvests of death, a number of young terrorists, 
eager for something to do, would be informed that their 
services were not required for the time being and that they 
must wait and lie low until they received further instruc- 
tions. These instructions, however, would either not be 
issued at all or not for a long period, during which these un- 
employed young men, who had no means of subsistence, 
were left literally to starve. For many of them had no pro- 
fession, no trade, no training, and very often no passports, 
so that even if employment were offered them they could 
not profit by it. The funds of the revolutionary organisa- , 
tion were enormous — to my knowledge one donation | 
amounted to over a million roubles, and the cabinet of the 
day intended to have the donor tried and executed, when 
they learned that he had committed suicide. But Azeff had 
the disposal of all moneys, and it was he who tightened the 
purse strings when solicited to contribute to the support of 
the starving executors of his sanguinary behests. So wide- 
spread and intense were the hardships to which these 
wretched men were exposed that special kitchens were 
opened in Finland, at which they could obtain a meal 
gratuitously. In these ways Azeff, the revolutionary genius, 
played the game of the government most successfully and 
spread demoralisation whithersoever he went. And the 



GAPON AND AZEFF 181 

system of which he discharged but one of the functions, 
hardened, narrowed, and brutahsed the thinking public 
throughout the Tsardom. 

The Emperor has been held responsible for that system. 
And in a sense he accepted the responsibility. He was aware 
of the infamous nature of the services which Azeff rendered 
and was paid for. Burtzeff had publicly accused Ratch- 
koffsky and Gerassimoff, who were Azeff's superiors, of con- 
nivance at these abominable crimes and of scattering social 
solvents broadcast for no object worth having. In Paris, 
London, and New York he had published these accusations. 
The Duma had taken the subject up and discussed it. The 
ministers had read and answered questions about Azeff and 
his victims. I myself had spoken of him to Stolypin, Witte, 
Durnovo, Schwanebach, Kurloff, and several of their col- 
leagues. They must, therefore, have known and did know 
exactly for what kind of services he was being paid, and also 
how he stood with the two hostile parties. Yet they made no 
protest. The truth is that the atmosphere was impregnated 
with mephitic gases to which most people had grown accus- 
tomed. Neither Stolypin nor any other average minister could 
alter the state of things. The circumstance required down- 
right fierce resistance or whole-hearted adherence. And they 
chose the latter. 

The fact is that the whole system was essentially immoral. 
The bureaucracy was an organism outside the nation, living 
upon it parasitically, interested in obscuring its views, in 
clouding its judgment, in impairing or even destroying its 
self-reliance, in a word it resembled in fundamentals the 
opritchina of Ivan the Terrible. The main structural 
differences between the Muscovy of those early times and 
the Russia of the last two Romanoffs ^ consisted in the 
insurmountable obstacle to centralisation which had been 
raised by the emancipation of the serfs, coupled with the 

* The house of the Romanoffs became extinct after the death of the 
Tsaritsa EHzabcth I. The house that reigned since them is that of 
Holstein-Gotthorp. Elizabeth's nephew, Peter III., was the first sovereign 
of this dynasty. 



182 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

refusal of the government to allow part of the work of 
administration to devolve upon the zemstvos, the changes 
necessitated by Witte's efforts at industrialisation, and the 
increase in the number of "intellectuals" from whom the 
bureaucracy and the revolutionary party were recruited. Of 
one section of the intelligentsia the principal occupation in 
the Empire was to spread foreign theories, to sow new and 
dissolvent ideas, to seduce officials, soldiers, sailors, to hatch 
conspiracies, and prepare a revolution. Another momentous 
difference was supplied by the changed atmosphere of 
Europe which had become much more favourable to the 
diffusion of democratic ideas. But the spirit of the ruling 
class had undergone no modification. The bureaucracy — 
now supreme and irresponsible — was solicitous about its 
own interests which were taken to stand for those of the 
entire community, and as opposition to these interests was 
intenser than ever before, the old traditional methods were 
no longer efficacious. The last vestiges of moral barriers 
had, therefore, been pulled down and the agents of the State 
went to work with marvellous thoroughness and absolute 
unscrupulousness. 

The most perfect types of these latter-day defenders of 
the autocracy were Plehve, and his agents Ratchkoffsky, 
Zubatoff, Gapon, and among the consequences of the system 
were the meeting of the two extremes, the effacement of the 
line of demarcation between the reaction and the revolution, 
the employment of the same agents for crimes devised for 
the support of the autocracy and for its overthrow, the 
identification of heinous deeds and praiseworthy exploits, 
the confusion of evil and good. Thus the State authorities 
shrank from nothing. In the provinces and sometimes, it is 
said, in Moscow and Petersburg, torture was resorted to | 
methodically to extort confessions. Several cases which i 
occurred in the provinces came under my cognisance at the I 
time, one of which made a deep impression on me because j 
the central authorities, to whose notice I brought the matter, 
could only assure me that they were not directly responsible 
for the * 'hasty deeds of provincial agents working under 



GAPON AND AZEFF 183 

constant fear of death. The chief of the district of Novo- 
minsk was killed ^ and four men were arrested on suspicion. 
They denied all participation in the crime. Then it was 
decided to put them to the torture. Unable to hold out they 
made confessions which were used against them and were 
put to death. It afterwards turned out that they were not 
guilty of the deed. The real murderer was discovered. He 
confessed and was executed. The ministers to whose notice 
I brought these facts, which they could not deny, regretted 
them, but found them explicable and excusable in the 
circumstances. 

During the first days after Bloody Sunday the government 
intensified the measures of repression. In particular it was 
strictly forbidden to collect money for the surviving victims 
of the massacre. Harmless literary men, professors, and 
journalists were imprisoned, and 500 cells were got ready in 
the fortress. General Trepoff was appointed to be a sort of 
dictator with his residence in the Winter Palace, and every- 
body expected a reign of terror. Gapon, who had received a 
false passport, succeeded in escaping. But with true Russian 
suddenness, Trepoff reversed the machine and did exactly 
what everybody thought he would never think of doing. In a 
jiffy he became more liberal than the liberals, set free the men 
of letters, journalists, professors, and others who were in- 
terned in the fortress, and left the 500 newly prepared cells 
empty. Nay, more, he persuaded the Tsar himself to open a 
subscription in aid of the widows and orphans of the slain 
with a donation of fifty thousand roubles. People thought he 
had gone mad. He was only moved by one of the hidden 
springs that play such a large part in Russian psychology, 
which knows not finality and recks not of coherency. 

Public feeling against the Tsar and his advisers now ran 
high. The Zemsky Assembly of Kharkoff in an address 
plainly told him that the violation of the nation's elementary 
rights was unchaining a tempest of bloody civil war which 
would subvert his throne. "Do not trust, sire, to negligent 

* In 1906. Trustworthy evidence of torture for political purposes in 
Petersburg I had none. 



184 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

and wily servants, but repose confidence in the elected repre 
sentatives of the nation." From all comers of the Empir 
came petitions, addresses, resolutions in the same sense. I 
the meanwhile, the secret revolutionary committee con 
demned General Trepoff and the Grand Duke Sergius to 
death, and published the sentence in leaflets, one of which 
I received. 

Police, gendarmes, detectives, and spies were unavailing 
to save the grand duke, who, perhaps because he anticipated 
their powerlessness, took the wise precaution of driving and 
walking without his consort. He knew he was doomed to 
die by violence, and he faced his doom like a man. He had 
been for years the embodiment of the vital principle of the 
autocracy. Therefore he was first on the list of the pro- 
scribed. He had misruled Moscow with a rod of iron; he 
had persecuted the Jews with a degree of hatred akin to 
mania. Nothing that he said or did seemed inspired by ethical 
motives or shaped by considerations of justice. He despised 
soft-heartedness, ignored scruples, and went straight to the 
goal regardless of consequences. 

One of his last acts was to give currency to the statement 
that Japanese gold had bribed the Russian people to cease 
work, hamper the government, and co-operate with the J 
public enemy. The accusation was badly worded. The gold! 
was but a help, not a stimulant. His adjutant, DjunkofiFsky, 
took the telegram containing that terrible accusation to a 
newspaper office in Moscow, strove hard to have it accepted, 
and finally caused it to be circulated in St. Petersburg, where, 
although not printed, it was used to envenom public feeling 
again him. That the Japanese had money distributed 
among Russian revolutionists of a certain grade and that 
considerable sums were laid out in this way is, I am boundJ 
to say, certain, just as German money has been circulating! 
among them ever since August, 19 14. I know the names of 
some of those who distributed it. 

The degree of responsibility that weighs upon the Tsar 
personally has often been debated, and the consensus of 
opinion, Russian and foreign, was that he was kept 



GAPON AND AZEFF 185 

ignorance of what was being done in his name and was not 
only weak-willed but feeble of intellect as well. Against this 
view my articles in the years 1904-7 were directed. For I 
knew personally many of the persons who unfolded to him 
in great detail the condition of the country and the changing 
moods of the people during most of the crises that marked his 
reign. I also read and copied hundreds of the annotations 
which he himself scribbled on the State papers laid before 
him for cognisance or signature. I had seen and described 
the manuscript journal which was diligently prepared for 
him every day and which contained adequate accounts of the 
various political and other movements of the time. And I 
had the corroborative testimony of a number of his ministers. 
From these and other sources I drew the conclusion that 
i Nicholas II., who was nowise devoid of intelligence but only 
I of social sympathy, was profoundly convinced that he was 
the vicar of God upon earth, and the spiritual leader, not 
merely of the Russian people, but of the civilised races of 
mankind to whom he had given light and leading at The 
Hague. Flatterers at home and abroad, along with a rare 
faculty for self-hypnotisation, confirmed him in that belief. 

Much of his time he spent in his cabinet at what he 
termed work, which consisted in signing replies to addresses 
of loyalty elicited by his own agents and penning comments 
on the various reports presented by ministers, governors, 
and other officials. His courtiers encouraged him to believe 
that all these replies and desultory remarks were words of 
wisdom to be preserved for future ages, and he had some 
grounds for believing them, seeing that even such trivial 
remarks as, "I am very glad," "God grant it may be so," 
were, when possible, published in large type in the news- 
papers, artistically glazed over in the manuscript, and care- 
fully preserved in the archives like the relics of a saint. But 
the most interesting were never published; and to these 
there was no end. Plere is one. During the Manchurian 
campaign a report of the negotiations respecting the warship 
Manchur was laid bef(jrc him by Count Lamsdorff. The 
tenor of it was that the Chinese authorities had summoned 



186 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the Manchu to quit the neutral harbour of Shanghai at the 
repeated and urgent request of the Japanese consul there. On 
the margin of that report his Majesty penned the words, "The 
Japanese consul is a scoundrel." 

When I was with Witte at Portsmouth (U.S.A.), th 
statesman sent a telegram to the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
Count Lamsdorff, suggesting that Japan's claim to retain hal 
of the island of Sakhalien and to receive a certain mone 
compensation for the other half should be seriously considered 
This telegram was laid before the Emperor, who, as I after- 
wards learned, wrote upon it : ^'Neither a rood of land nor i 
rouble shall Japan receive. From this position nothing wil 
ever make me recede." 

I possess a large collection of these childish remarks as 
well as copies of many of his letters to ministers and others on 
public affairs, and it was partly from these, coupled with 
his public acts, that I drew my estimate of his character. 
Some of his comments on the course of public justice when 
it was being systematically deflected from its right course by 
the obsequiousness of court flunkeys bear out the charge of 
a-morality and callousness which I ventured to reproduce a1 
the outset. One of these glosses, taken in connection with 
the correspondence that preceded it, is an act of protection 
extended to deliberate assassination, perpetrated for the 
purpose of removing real or supposed adversaries of the 
autocracy. I fear it is not possible to acquit the monarch oi 
this damaging charge. Into this amazing action of the Tsar 
I inquired all the more fully because, as already stated, the 
third assassination — two men had been successfully mur 
dered, of whom one was an old friend and the other an ol 
acquaintance of mine — would have sent me also to th 
shades had it been carried out. 

All that need be said here is that the Emperor intervened 
personally in writing — I possess his exact words among my 
documents — to ward off the sword of justice from the 
criminals-in-chief. 



\ 



CHAPTER XI 
WiTTE Condemned to Die 

One of the most repulsive sides of the reaction of 1906-7 
and of the autocratic regime that engendered it was laid 
bare in the course of the investigations which took place in 
the latter year into the various attempts made on Witters 
life. Incidentally the iniquity of the hidden workings of 
Tsarism burst fitfully into the light and caused even Witte's 
faith to waver in the viability of the regime. Those in- 
quiries were both official and private, and the records of 
them passed through my hands. I knew the names and 
possessed photographs of the would-be assassins, and I 
telegraphed accounts of their misdeeds to London in the 
hope of having the penitent criminal sent to Russia for 
public trial, and for the exposure of the crimes of his em- 
ployers — people in high places — in accordance with his own 
desire. The friends of the Tsar had come to the conclusion 
that the autocracy would wither and die unless the man 
who had concluded peace with Japan and constrained the 
Emperor to create the Duma were done to death. 

Witte was the one statesman who had arisen in Russia 
since the days of Peter. He pursued a fairly coherent policy, 
just to the past, congruous with the present, anticipatory of 
the future. Its immutable postulate was peace in Europe and 
the world. In vain he had endeavoured to carry it out against 
the insurmountable difficulties created by the Tsar and the 
Tsar's environment, but even in the face of these he had 
prevented one war and ended another. Perceiving the im- 
possibility of saving the Tsardom from anarchy or the 
population from ruin under the prevailing regime, he had 
worked hard and not unsuccessfully to modify it, and to him 
the credit or the blame of having extorted the October con- 
stitution from Nicholas H. was universally attributed. The 
achievements he had thus effected despite vast obstacles 

187 



188 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

stirred the admiration of all who were capable of appre- 
ciating them. 

But for the Tsarist State it was expedient that Witte 
should die. And he was accordingly condemned to be 
assassinated. The sentence was passed, not by revolu- 
tionists — these had no grievance against him — but by an 
association of reactionaries subventioned by the court and 
patronised by the Emperor. It was the statesman's belief 
that if these reactionaries had had among them men who 
like the terrorists were prepared to die for their idea, they 
could have made away with him quickly, but being mostly 
drawing-room plotters they depended upon mercenaries 
to deal the death-stroke and face the danger. That was why 
one of them, Kazantseff by name, deluded two or three 
shallow-brained louts of anti-Tsarist leanings into believing 
that he represented the revolutionary executive which had 
condemned certain traitors to die. He then exhorted them 
to render a valuable service to the cause by carrying out the 
sentence. The dull-witted bumpkins acquiesced and killed 
B. Yollos, an old friend of mine, a brilliant publicist and 
member of the first Duma who had just invited me to 
Moscow. He was shot dead in the broad daylight. A 
friend of his, also an old acquaintance of mine, Herzenstein, 
was likewise put to death by Kazantseff's orders. 

Witte's destruction was devised with method and de- 
liberation. A plan of his house was made and two infernal 
machines timed to explode at 9 a.m. were lowered down the 
chimney. Although filled with high explosives which would 
have riven the entire wall of the building, the machines, 
owing to a defect in the works, did not explode.^ 

The next attempt was better devised. When the ex- 
Premier was getting into his motor, bombs were to be 
thrown at him. And as I accompanied him, I should have 
shared his fate. 

One Friday morning ^ everything was carefully planned 

* I held one of them in my hands and carried it downstairs in presence 
of Witte and of the chief police agent 
*0n the 7th June, 1907. 



WITTE CONDEMNED 189 

for the crime, which was to have been committed on the 
following day after lunch at about half-past one. And if the 
plan had been realised the Premier and myself would have 
been assassinated. A soothsayer, Witte remarked, might on 
that Friday noon have foretold my future with perfect truth 
in some such words as these: "Your life is in danger. The 
danger is imminent, and the chances that you will escape it 
are exceedingly slight. The assassins are two, their immedi- 
ate employer is one, behind him is the greatest power in the 
Empire watching, winking, shielding. They have already 
been employed on similar jobs. Your friend Yollos was one 
of their victims. This time they are to blow up a motor-car 
in which you will be seated, you and a distinguished states- 
man. The appointed time is to-morrow. He and you have 
one and only one hope of escape. It is not in the unsuccessful 
explosion — that is eliminated, for the bombs are powerful. 
It depends upon a much less likely contingency. In order 
that you should come off with your life to-morrow, it is 
necessary that the employer, who is safe and sound and sure 
of success, should be Wieaded by one or both of his assist- 
ants. Nothing else will avail you ought. The outlook is 
dismal." 

That forecast, had it been uttered on Friday, would have 
dovetailed with the facts exactly. For the plot was to be' 
executed on the following day by the two murderers, who 
from a tavern opposite Witte's house were to advance and 
throw highly explosive bombs at the motor as he entered. 
There was nobody to hinder them. But in the meantime one 
of the would-be assassins, Feodoroff, an ignorant dull-witted 
lad, had acquired the conviction that he was being duped by 
Kazantseff who, posing as a Bolshevik, had told him that it 
was the Revolutionary Party that had condemned Witte to 
(lie for having betrayed it by arresting some of its members. 

The truth was that Kazantseff was himself the paid agent 
of an official in the government service, and they both 
belonged to the band of reactionaries known as the League 
of the Russian People patronised by the Tsar. 

One of the would-be lx)mb-throwcrs, Feodoroff. had for 



I 



190 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

some time suspected that he was being hoodwinked. After 
having murdered a man described to him as a reactionary he 
learned from the newspapers that his victim was one of the 
most promising Liberal Parliamentarians and publicists in 
the Empire, B. Yollos, whereupon he asked his employer, 
Kazantseff, for explanations. As the explanations only half 
satisfied him, he and his companion kept a watch on their 
suborner who next urged them to assassinate a man named 
Dr. Belsky and then Count Witte. But opening a drawer of 
his table one day during his temporary absence, one of the 
murderers found convincing proof among the papers there 
that Kazantseff was a member of the reactionary society 
known as the League of the Russian People. Thereupon 
he decided to kill him. At first Saturday was the day fixed. 

I was lunching with Witte on that day and on my arrival 
he said, "I must leave the house immediately after lunch 
to-day, for there is a sitting of the Council of the Empire at 
which I want to be present. You and I shall drive together 
there at once after coffee." But before we had left his study 
for the dining-room the telephone bell rang. Witte listened, 
became anxious, and after a few monosyllabic questions set 
down the receiver. Then turning to me he said, "Something 
grave is happening. Akimoff ^ tells me there will be no 
sitting of the Council to-day.^ It appears that some crime 
is being devised in connection with the sitting. He cannot 
tell me what it is. My impression from what I have just 
heard is that the terrorists want to blow up the upper 
chamber and all its members." I said, *'We shall know 
later. As you have ordered the motor let us use it. Come 
with me after lunch to the Exhibition of Motor Cars, 
in the Michael Riding School." Witte assented, and when 
the repast was over we went. The crime devised was the 
murder of Witte. 

This attempt, however, was postponed to the day of the 
next sitting of the Council, but in the meantime things took 
an unexpected turn. Kazantseff went with Feodoroff to a 

"President of the Council of the Empire. 
■ On the 9th June, 1907. 



WITTE CONDEMNED 191 

place outside Petersburg in a wood where on the eve he had 
hidden the explosives for the bombs. Feodoroff and he first 
walked along the rails and then turned into the forest. 
Kazantseff having found the place where he had hidden the 
materials, began to fill the bombs. Feodoroff at first intended 
to wait until the work was done, but on second thoughts he 
took a dagger and at once plunged it into Kazantseff's neck. 
As it chanced it was a weapon which he had received from 
his victim a day or two before for a different human sacrifice. 
Kazantseff quivered, fell to the ground, and lay motionless 
in a pool of blood. Then the murderer began to rifle his 
pockets for papers, but the seemingly dead man stirred and 
gazed up at Feodoroff weirdly. Losing all self-mastery 
Feodoroff seized the dagger and drove it wildly into Kazant- 
seff's cheeks and neck, having forgotten to take it out of the 
scabbard, and in his frenzy he at last dealt such a sweeping 
blow with it that the head was severed from the trunk. 
Then he went back to Petersburg, gave himself up to the 
revolutionary party, confessed his crimes, and asked them 
to put him to death. 

As soon as I learned the details I communicated them to 
London ^ in the hope that European opinion might perhaps 
constrain the Russian government to accept the offer made 
by Feodoroff to surrender himself on condition that he had 
a public trial. This I did in concert with Witte, who said 
to me, however, ^'Please write down this prediction of 
mine before you send your telegram : the Russian govern- 
ment will not bring Feodoroff nor his companion to trial 
because if it did it is the Tsar's own environment that . . . 
would be the real accused, and it is they whom the evidence 
would condemn. Therefore, they cannot accept your 
challenge." And I wrote his prediction down. It came 
true. None the less Witte made every effort to have light 
thrown on the plots against his life, but to no purpose. 
Stolypin and the Minister of Justice ^ were determined that 

* They were tclcf?raphed by mc to the Daily Telegraph. 
' Shlshcglovitoff, the same minist<^T who arranged tlic infamous indict- 
ment of an innocent Jew for an imaginary ritual murder. 



192 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



ew I 
pin I 

R,i_ 1 



the matter should be hushed up, so they allowed only a few 
formalities to take place before ending the inquiry. Stolypin 
himself had requested me, the year before, to use my influ- 
ence to keep Witte out of Russia, and answering a direct 
question of mine, added that while willing to protect 
him if he should come back, he could not promise to do it 
efficaciously. 

This attitude and all that it was subsequently found to 
imply filled the ex-premier with bitterness of soul. He 
complained of it to various ministers and dignitaries, and 
finally brought the matter to the knowledge of the Emperor. 
But he obtained no satisfaction. The official inquiry into 
the attempt on his life by means of the infernal machines 
was stopped by the public prosecutor on the ground that he 
could not find the guilty parties. The investigation into the 
other plot likewise became a mere matter of form. I still 
possess a long document dictated by the statesman himself 
asking me to bring the following facts to the cognisance of 
the civilised world: — 

"In circles that may fairly be termed official, the various 
attempts on my life were spoken of, and in one case written 
about, several days before they were actually made.^ You 
know the crimes laid to my charge. I was accused of having 
made peace with the Japanese and of having destroyed the 
autocracy in Russia. And the reactionary hangers-on of the 
court were for killing me. The Prefect of Petersburg^ 
himself stated that he was aware that an attempt on my life 
would be made. The second plot against me was known to 
many people in advance: several members of the Council 
of the Empire had heard of it. The President of the Council 
knew of it and adjourned the sitting on account of it. The 
ex-Director of the Department of the Police ^ announced it 
to the ex-Minister of Finances, Shipofif. I received a letter 



* I can confirm this assertion for I was present on some occasions when 
Witte was warned. I once warned him myself. 

' Von Launitz. He was himself assassinated in accordance with a plot 
arranged by the head spy of the government; Azeff, 

'A, A. Lojpukhine, 



« 



WITTE CONDEMNED 193 

from my would-be murderer demanding 50O0 roubles, and 
the express carrier who handed me the letter was authorised 
to take the money back. I put white paper into the envelope 
as though it were banknotes, informed the police agent, and 
asked him to have the express messenger followed. My 
request was agreed to verbally, but it was not complied with, 
lest the criminal should be caught. 

*'What grieved me profoundly was that a lying report 
was spread at the time by the reactionaries that I had had the 
bombs put down my own chimney. At present even they 
do not dare to repeat it because the conspirators who com- 
mitted the crime have since become known. But how 
members of the Stolypin cabinet could have given currency 
to this black calumny, aware as they were that the Prefect 
of Petersburg was cognisant of the conspiracy long before 
it was carried out, I cannot understand. 

"Why was Kazantseff not arrested after any of his 
murders? As you know, he took part in the assassination 
of Herzenstein. Of this a gendarme was eye-witness. He 
also arranged the plot against my life. He had your friend 
Yollos shot in Moscow. Then he came back to Petersburg 
to try again to have me killed. The authorities are con- 
versant with the intention and the endeavours to compass it. 
They were also informed of the day, and yet they plead that 
they could do nothing to bring the plot-weaver to justice! 
And when Kazantseff himself was killed they feigned not to 
know who he was. Mark these dates: on the 27th May 
(9th June) the murder of Kazantseff l^ecame known, yet on 
the I5th/28th July the public prosecutor abandoned the 
inquiry into the plots against my life. But the authorities 
knew all about Kazantseff. They must have known, because 
it was in concert with the League of the Russian People that 
he had Yollos shot. And when he did this he was a de- 
tective agent; he was in receipt of a salary from a govern- 
ment official, and he was living on a false pass|)()rt given to 
him by the secret police. In order to be ahk* to entrap 
impulsive young men he had been authorised to give 



i 



194 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

himself out as a revolutionist, and in this capacity he enlisted 
some unthinking lads to execute what he assured them were 
decrees of the terrorist organisation. 

"The plot to kill me was ingenious. Kazantseff betrayed 
a man named Petroff and had him sent to Archangel. This 
Petroff had been a member of the council of working men*s 
deputies who, when I was premier, wanted to arrest me, 
but all of whom I had arrested. If Kazantseff 's plan had 
put me out of existence, how would it have been explained? 
Not as a reactionary, but as a revolutionary crime. The 
authorities and their press would have pretended that Petroff 
had escaped from his place of punishment in order to be 
avenged on me. There would have been a tremendous out- 
cry against 'those mad revolutionists who would not spare 
even Count Witte.' Remember, all this took place at the 
moment when you were telling me and an unbelieving world 
that the second Duma was about to be dissolved. You 
remember how your statement was denied first by Nelidoff, 
then by the Finance Minister, Kokofftseff, and at last by the 
prime minister himself, in spite of which you repeated after 
each denial the time limit before which the Duma would 
cease to exist. Your prediction was verified. An adequate 
pretext was needed for the coercive measures then planned. 
A new electoral law, whittling down the franchise, was being 
secretly drafted by Stolypin, but there was no specious 
excuse for it. The murder of Witte by 'terrorists* would 
have supplied one. And how much more stringent that bill 
would have been if the murder of Witte had taken place in 
time and could have been laid to the charge of those who 
were desirous of enlarging the functions of the Duma !" 

The chain of thought between what Witte expressed in 
this utterance and what he inferred but left unsaid is suffi- 
ciently visible. He often told me that he was convinced of 
the complicity of prominent personages in the plot to kill 
him. When the official inquiry was at last abandoned he read 
me a letter for Stolypin, the Premier, which he had drafted, 
and after we had discussed its wording he had it delivered. 



WITTE CONDEMNED 195 

He finally contrived to elicit the Tsar's opinion on the matter. 
Of that I possess an exact copy.^ 

It was an emphatic assertion that ample justice had been 
done to Witte, and that the Minister of Justice was right in 
quashing the investigation. 

In sooth that was the nearest approach to justice to which 
the Tsarist State was capable of rising from the depths to 
which it then had fallen. It was the perverted social and 
moral conceptions embodied in those revolting methods of 
Azeff, Kazantseff, and their exalted employers that quickened 
in men, even in ardent monarchists, a puissant desire to have 
the country rescued at every cost from the choking grip of 
this awful nightmare. 

The regime having sophisticated the intelligence and 
debased the soul of the people had come to be thus destruc- 
tive of the foundation of mutual trust. It encouraged private 
citizens to form associations for the murder of eminent men 
of liberal tendencies. And several of these were now in 
existence. Whatever stock of moral force Tsarism may have 
had at the outset would seem to have been exhausted at the 
close of the Manchurian campaign. And the differences in 
the capacities of the various races and social classes of the 
community for steady advance along the road of cultured 
thought and feeling were by that time become too great, too 
fundamental, to warrant hope from any organising policy 
with unity as one of its aims. The Tsarist State was obvi- 
ously condemned to die. With a genial statesman like Witte 
at its head it might still, so to say, have appealed from the 
sentence, but only with the empty hope of prolonging life 
while the appeal was l>eing argued. W^ith Witte immobilised 
it could only drift helplessly towards the abyss. 

* I am unable to say whether this judgment of the Emperor was scribbled 
on Witte's remonstrance to Stolypin or on the report submitted to him by 
the Minister of Justice. A complete account of all the details is among 
my papers which for the moment are beyond my reach. Hut the main 
point is the tenor of the Tsar's judgment, and that I have reproduced. 



CHAPTER XII 
Rasputin — a Symbol 

To the ignorant and almost illiterate peasant Rasputin is 
attributed a role akin to that of Samson in pulling down the 
pillars of the Russian Tsardom. His sinister influence on 
the conduct of the war, his co-operation, deliberate and 
unwitting, with the foreign enemies of Russia, the wrath 
which his outrageous conduct aroused against the autocrat 
and the autocracy, are set down by contemporary annalists 
among the principal causes of the Russian Revolution. 

But the evidence adduced in support of this view is 
wholly inadequate. If the slovenly mooshik from Siberia 
had never existed, other charlatans would have wielded the 
sorcerer's wand in his stead. Before he appeared there had 
been no lack of them. "If only I have honey," says. the 
Turkish proverb, "the flies will come from Baghdad." To 
the honey in Tsarskoye Selo they came from France and 
Montenegro, but competition was open to all the peoples 
of the world. 

It is my belief that although friends of his — men like 
Stiirmer, Protopopoff, and the Metropolitan Archbishop 
Pitirim — were influential, Rasputin their friend was only a 
symbol. 

In a little Siberian village named Pokrovskoye, among 
the fens of Tinmen (province of Tobolsk), where the 
haunts of human beings are few and far apart, Gregory 
Rasputin first saw the light of day. The inhabitants, mostly 
sons and daughters of convicts, with developed atavistic 
tendencies, enjoyed an evil reputation among the neighbour- 
ing hamlets and villages, and prominent among them 
Gregory's father, known by the Christian name of Efim, 
eked out a precarious livelihood by horse-stealing. Brought 
up in this tainted atmosphere, the boy Gregory or Grisha 

196 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 197 

readily fell in with his surroundings, and from the time 
when he began to strike out his own walk in life — that of a 
carter — was known as ''Rasputin," an appellation which 
comes from the word rasputnik — debauchee. It is alleged 
by his enemies that from the first he was a lost soul, utterly 
cynical, vicious, and callous, but this is probably an exag- 
geration. People found something to like or admire in him 
even then. He made at least two friends in his childhood, 
the one a gardener named Barnabas or Varnava, and the 
other an ordinary peasant Striaptcheff — both hooligans — 
and he retained and reciprocated their friendship to the end 
of his life. With the former, who subsequently became a 
monk, I was personally acquainted before Rasputin had 
him raised to the dignity of Bishop of Tobolsk, from which 
height he was afterwards gently lowered with the empty 
title of ''Ex-Archbishop." 

It is curious to note how the cardinal doctrine of Ras- 
putin's later tlieology embraces and summarises his own 
proclivities and practices. It runs thus: "Sin in order that 
you may repent and obtain forgiveness." For he appears to 
have sinned freely in his unregenerate days and with a zest 
which he was wont to avow when answering those who re- 
buked him, "A libertine (Rasputin) I am and a libertine 
(Rasputin) I will remain!" It is in accordance with the 
fitness of things that some of the most helpful documentary 
materials for the early life of this extraordinary man should 
be laid away in the archives of the criminal court of TolxDlsk. 
Gossip which would fain pass for history, and for aught we 
know is history without its hall-mark, but with some of its 
credentials, lays horse-stealing, perjury, and the rape of an 
old woman and of a very young girl to his charge. For the 
second of these offences he was sentenced to be flogged. 
On neither of the other charges was he actually convicted, 
but they were not formally quashed until after his tragic 
death. If drunkenness were a criminal offence in those 
remote regions, Rasputin would have been a hardened 
criminal, for that and unclean living were his besetting sins. 
The utmost he could accomplish by the most strenuous 



198 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

religious effort, after his conversion, was not to eradicate, 
but only to restrict and re-label them. 

But inebriety and debauch were not his only vices in 
those early days. The most quarrelsome among the vil- 
lagers, he was the principal figure in well-nigh every vulgar 
brawl. Sometimes he would drive his cart to the town of 
Tiumen for hay, and return home a few days later drunk 
and disfigured, without the hay, without the money, and 
occasionally without the horses. And this disordered life 
he continued to lead until some fourteen years ago, when he 
attained the age of thirty and the state of grace. In Russia, 
where spontaneous repentance is generally the ultimate 
phase of crime, and religious conversion the last evolu- 
tionary stage of the sinner, touching charity on the part of 
the Russian people can be confidently reckoned upon by 
the evil-doer expiating his offences. Rasputin was no excep- 
tion to the rule, but his spiritual regeneration began at a 
relatively early period, while he was still capable of sinning, 
having been occasioned by one external influence and 
gradually modified by another. 

His journey to Damascus, as he is said to have termed it, 
consisted of a drive to Verkhoturie, a town some twenty 
miles distant from his native village. He was conveying 
thither a priest named Zaboroffsky, who is now the Rector 
of the Theological Academy of Tomsk, a pious theologian 
and zealous churchman, who entered into conversation 
with him about the brevity of life, the necessity of prepar- 
ing for death, the hideousness of sin, and the means of 
achieving salvation. He exhorted Rasputin, whose evil 
fame had reached even him, to do penance and lead "the 
god-like life" as they term it in Russia. 

Like most peasants in the Tsardom, Rasputin evinced a 
keen interest in these and kindred subjects, put various 
questions to his fare, and by the time he reached his desti- 
nation felt moved to his innermost depths. "When I took 
leave of Father Zaboroffsky," he told a friend long after- 
wards, "I fell into a profound meditation, and at its close 
my mind was made up: I resolved to do penance for my 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 199 

sins, to lead a godly life ever after, and to help those 
who like myself were plunged in ignorance and iniquity." 
He naturally had the traditional vision. A saint (Simon) 
appeared to him and commanded him to give up his vicious 
habits, and as is usual in such cases, the contrite sinner re- 
solved firmly to repent and turn from his evil ways. This 
temporary detachment from all but the cares of death and 
salvation meant to Rasputin immunity from the prison 
house or the convict settlement. Thereupon the gates of 
many a monastery were open to him had he chosen to 
become a monk, but whether from a sense of his own un- 
worthiness, or because he was still too illiterate, or in obedi- 
ence to a common Russian impulse to wander, he chose the 
painful but varied existence of a pilgrim, tramping from 
village to village, from shrine to shrine, without scrip or 
purse, barefoot and bare-headed, living on alms and collect- 
ing offerings for churches. Among other places he visited 
Jerusalem. 

Although he felt no vocation for the monastic life, 
Rasputin visited several monasteries and displayed an eager 
curiosity to become acquainted with the scriptures and the 
fathers of the Church. During a protracted stay in one of 
these retreats ^ he learned to read, and applying this accom- 
plishment to the study of the Bible, of Church history, and 
of a few of the writings of the fathers, he acquired a smatter- 
ing of what his enthusiastic followers ranked as ''theology." 
During the two years which passed in this preparation for 
his mission, he was assisted by the monks, with whom he 
was accustomed, after the manner of Russians who brood, 
to discuss religious and metaphysical problems with keen- 
ness, interest, and the conceptions of a child. With all this 
he never learned to write grammatically, orthographically, 
or even legibly. But he did not long abide in those tents of 
Kedar which afforded too little scope for a schemer who 
may have felt semi-consciously that his oyster was the vast 
1 empire of all the Russias. Within a few years of his depar- 
ture from this peaceful Abalaksky Monastery, he had 
soared aloft and was circling above the Tsardom. 
* In the Abalaksky Monastery. 



200 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

It is easy to smile incredulously at the religious conversion 
of a low-minded being like Rasputin, who breathed an 
atmosphere of vice and bewrayed an inherited tendency to 
crime. Reading it in the light of his subsequent conduct, one 
feels tempted to label this apparent change for the better as 
an act of downright hypocrisy. But such simplicism in 
appreciating mixed motives argues unacquaintance with the 
intricacy and subtlety of the moral world in general, and of 
Russian psychology in particular. Nowhere are good, bad, 
and indifferent motives so inextricably interwoven as in 
the Russian conscience, nowhere are the conflicting issues of 
action harder to size up. The elements of personality which 
only in rare critical moments are called into play, to bring 
forth the deciding act that shall set its stamp on the moral 
individuality, are precisely those which the surface agita- 
tions of every-day existence leave wholly untouched. Hence 
they are unknown to the outsider, the friend, the confidant, 
nay, to the man himself, until the circumstances arise that 
bring them into action. The Russian character is a many- 
chorded instrument and the every-day notes, touched by the 
ordinary events of a life-time, give no impression of those 
other passionate sounds which a sudden and subtle appeal 
is capable of evoking. A certain heroic force for good or 
evil is often dormant for years in an individual which only 
the stress of storm can awaken. In any case, it would be rash 
to refuse to Rasputin credit for all the earnestness and 
sincerity of which his shallow nature was capable. I have 
known many peasants like him in various parts of the vast 
Russian Empire who, so far as I could judge by observation, 
lacked only the opportunity to rival his feats, but who, for 
want of temptation, never swerved very widely from the 
line of conduct which they had adopted at their conversion. 
Rasputin himself was at no time callous. Even in the days 
of his alleged omnipotence he could never dispense with 
friendship nor turn a deaf ear to the cries of the suffering. 
He was ever ready to hie to the assistance of the poor and 
the friendless. When he sat comfortably in his reception 
room at the house of the Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 201 

receiving the high and the lowly, he displayed open-hearted 
interest in the woes of the latter and readily contributed to 
assuage their misery and better their lot. His deepest 
instincts were those of his people, and hardness of heart 
is assuredly not among their failings. This view is con- 
firmed by the testimony of adversaries like the Bishop of 
Saratoff, Hermogen. 

Morbid retrospection is almost an inherent quality of 
many Russians and asceticism its ordinary outcome. De- 
barred for ages from all forms of activity fitted to satisfy 
the mind, the Russian broods over the mental and material 
conditions of his existence and analyses his relations to that 
unseen world into which his religion gives him a glimpse. 
These meditations frequently touch the more timorous souls 
with a species of madness, distorting their piety into super- 
stitious terror and criminal practices. But despite these 
spiritual visions, the earthiness of the individual is still there, 
merely dormant. 

Rasputin then was no mere hypocrite. For a time at least 
he subjected himself to the discipline which he advocated, 
and endeavoured in his primitive way to provide individual 
life with a spiritual or emotional basis. On his journeys to 
Odessa, Kieff, Moscow, and Petrograd, and after his return 
home, he distinguished himself by a degree of austerity in 
observing the practices of his faith which astonished his 
neighbours and set many of them thinking about the mean- 
ing of life and their relations to the Unseen. He was always 
the first to enter the church, the last to leave it, and the most 
contrite in bewailing his transgressions. He would expose 
his half-naked body to the wintry winds, walk barefoot in 
the snow, and fast for days. When kneeling l)efore the altar 
he would strike the ground with his forehead in the usual 
Orthodox way, but with such unusual violence that the blood 
trickled down his face. 

These and other austerities, coupled with the consideration 
in which he was held by some of the villagers, filled him 
with spiritual pride. His head was gradually turned. His 
knowledge of "theology" and his works of penitence seemed 



202 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



1 



II 



to raise him to dizzy heights of perfection. To those who 
questioned him about his conversion he gave an account 
which set it on a par with that of St. Paul, and hinted in 
obscure phrases that the divine Hght then vouchsafed him 
was shining still within, enabling him to discern things 
hidden, present and future. His pilgrimage and self-imposed 
penances having obtained for him the appellation of 
Starets or elder — a name accorded not to monks or priests, 
but to laymen who have renounced the world and live only 
for God and the salvation of their own souls — he sought to 
add to it the titles of wonder-worker and prophet. Whenever 
his neighbours put a question to him he would look dreamily 
away into the distance, remain silent for several minutes, 
and then reply slowly and in disconnected phrases as though 
awakening from a trance. The penitent thief was occasion- 
ally merged in the crafty charlatan. 

Like so many other notorieties who play a flashy part on 
the world's theatre, Rasputin strove to live up to his strange 
reputation without doing too great violence to his ingrained 
leanings. And he attracted several admiring as well as 
believing followers, even in his own native village. For in 
addition to remarkable hypnotic power he possessed an in- 
exhaustible fund of low cunning, was wonderfully quick inl 
perceiving the weaknesses of his fellows, and supple in ad- 
justing his action to them. He felt that a considerable element 
of mysticism lies dormant in the soul of nearly every Russian 
which a death, a disappointment, a bout of illness, or an 
earnest word of exhortation may at any moment awaken to 
activity, with far-reaching consequences. This religious 
temperament explains the number, variety, and strange 
character of the sects in the Tsardom.^ Thus there is a sect of 
wanderers whose members may never tarry more than three ■ 
days in any one place, nor carry any baggage with them in 
their life-long peregrinations; a sect of religious Nihilists; 
a numerous sect composed of fanatics who mutilate them- 
selves (Skoptsy) most cruelly, earn their livelihood very 

*For years I made a study of them, intending to write a history of 
Russian sects. 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 203 

often as money-changers, help each other generously, and 
leave their wealth to worthy public charities; a widely 
spread sect of men and women (Khlysty) who pray together, 
join hands and dance together, and then extinguish the lights 
and give themselves up to wild orgies. . . . There were 
suicidal sects of which the earliest had many adepts in the 
north and centre of Russia, and whose cardinal dogma was 
salvation by means of the "baptism of fire and water." 
Hundreds of members of this fanatical sodality cheerfully 
burned themselves alive, chanting pious hymns or shouting 
allelujah as they died. Most Russian sects ^ were founded 
by ignorant men or women who felt disgusted with the 
emptiness or the evils of life, heard the call of divine grace, 
and formed the resolution to live for God, but who together 
with these moral and religious strands invariably twisted 
some of their own weaknesses or vices and produced a 
curious cord which linked them to the earth or to the nether 
regions sometimes more closely and more firmly than to 
heaven. 

Rasputin's propensities lay in the direction of the Khlysty, 
but that he was ever formally initiated into that community, 
as some of his enemies maintain, there is no evidence to 
show. Nor is it of moment to decide whether he received 
the impulse from without. Religious history and psychology 
teach us that mysticism and sensuality are never very far 
apart. As concupiscence was the main source of his own 
fall from grace, he not unnaturally generalised and taught 
that that was the one deadly sin against which the true 
Christian's exertions should be unceasingly directed. But 
the Khlysty's method he propounded harmonised with his 
vicious proclivities and reminds me of the answer once made 
by a bright Sunday-school child who, when catechised by 
the Roman Catholic priest as to what one must do in order 
to benefit by the sacrament of penance, made answer, **You 
must first go and commit sin, your reverence." That was 
exactly the doctrine propagated by Rasputin, who main- 
tained that salvation can be achieved only by repentance, and 

*In Russia there are sects that have come down from the earliest ages 
of Christianity, and that of the Skoptsy is probably one. 



204 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that in order to repent efficaciously it behoves one first to 
sin. Like the Khlysty, whose sect his own Httle congregations 
resembled, he taught that every act of contrition in common 
must be preceded by the commission of sin in common. 

Incontinence being the predominant vice against which a 
Christian must struggle, the means of combating it were 
thus unfolded by Rasputin as they had been taught by the 
Khlysty. They commended themselves to the sensual mind 
of the teacher who, in these tenets, perceived an easy way 
of associating his inveterate vice with godliness, while the 
simple souls who gathered around him as their saviour 
were amazed at the ease and pleasure with which they could 
qualify for the Kingdom of Heaven. 

But the hard-headed male peasants of Pokrovskoye 
received the stories of Rasputin's marvellous gifts of pro- 
phecy, healing, and second sight with the scepticism which 
is part of their upbringing; whereas the hearts of the women 
were touched, their faith was assured, their zeal was in- 
flamed. They bruited abroad the tidings of the new prophet, 
whose reputation soon spread to the neighbouring villages 
and towns. From time to time the curious and the pious came 
to converse with him and returned impressed, some with his 
eccentricity, others with his sanctity, all with his personality. 

It would be rash to assert that, at this transitional period 
of his career, Rasputin's attempts to form a sect were in- 
spired by motives wholly foreign to what went by the name 
of religion. True he was a man of excitable temperament, 
strong passions, possessed by one ungovernable vice, and 
devoid of a moral standard. But he was profoundly dis- 
satisfied with his former way of living, and without perhaps 
analysing too closely the specific causes of his dissatisfaction 
he was sincerely desirous of entering into continuous rela- 
tions with the Unseen. He had knowledge of some religious 
denominations in which depravity, in particular that form 
of it to which he himself had so long been a slave, was in- 
geniously grafted on piety and the strange mixture provided 
with a sanction termed divine. Thus he had met with 
sectarians who, persuaded that to the pure in spirit all things 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 205 

are clean and may be made holy, had adopted and hallowed 
practices which are penalised by the criminal law. And to 
a mind steeped, as his had been, in moral uncleanness, and 
twisted by fanatical delusions, it may well have seemed 
conceivable that antinomianism in sexual morality is com- 
patible with and even conducive to true religion. He assured 
me that that was his conviction and his accents were sincere. 
I have met with other fanatics in Russia who held, preached, 
and practised these tenets and appeared not only never to 
feel a qualm of remorse or a twinge of misgiving, but to 
enjoy a calm of conscience which the truly religious often 
lack. And they were ready to undergo the severest pains and 
penalties rather than abandon the faith or swerve from the 
conduct which they ascribed to divine revelation. It is not 
easy for Westerns who have not lived among such people 
and become thoroughly conversant with their perverted 
modes of thought to weigh their motives and impulses and 
determine the parts played by semi-conscious self-de- 
ception, by fanatical delusions, and by hypnotic suggestion. 
I feel strongly that beneath the coarseness and selfishness 
of such a man's outer life and his vulgar histrionic demeanour 
one may fairly admit the possibilities of mystic stirrings and 
spiritual aspirations. 

The seeds sown by Rasputin fell on grateful soil, the 
Russian psyche being prone to mysticism, and he soon 
attained the status of local saint. Peasant women journeyed 
to Pokrovskoye, bringing with them the halt, the blind, the 
sick, and, above all, those who were "possessed by demons" 
— a class still deemed numerous in the Russia of to-day. 
Rasputin treated some, with results which were thought 
to be miraculous, and declared that others were being tried 
by God and must bear their cross or respond cheerfully to 
the summons calling them to another life. His power over 
the spirits of evil was thus recognised, at first by women, and 
these enabled him to found a congregation of "Sisters" — 
the nucleus of a sect. Now and again he would leave this 
flock, retire into the forest for several days to commune with 
the deity, with whom his relations were becoming more 



206 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

direct and intimate, and then return with a brighter halo to 
the little community. Possessing by this time a house of 
his own, he had an apartment turned into a small chapel 
where religious exercises were carried on. He also dug a 
deep cellar on the ground floor into which he daily went 
down, remaining there for hours in prayer and meditation, 
wrestling, as he said, with the devil, whom he vanquished at 
last by dint of superhuman efforts and after many vicissi- 
tudes. In this "dug-out" he was also wont to sleep. 

For a considerable period the new sect, which never 
openly broke with the Orthodox Church, consisted almost 
exclusively of women, most of whom were young, blooming, 
and comely. Among the earliest and simplest were Katya, 
Dunya, Helen. More interesting than these was Alexandra 
Dubrovina, the daughter of well-to-do parents, a healthy 
pretty girl, brimful of spirits, whose relations with the 
Teacher form a chapter apart. It was only very gradually 
and partially that the scepticism of some of the men was 
overcome by the frequency of Rasputin's marvellous cures 
and the repetition of heavenly signs and tokens. One of the 
first male converts was his god-son, another was his cousin 
Raspopoff, and these men by their example dispelled the 
misgivings of the doubters and drew others to the new sect. 
For their lives were exemplary. They had forsworn 
alcoholic drinks, were eminently peaceful and law-abiding, 
kept regular hours, and were honest and industrious. "By 
our fruits you may know us," Rasputin said triumphantly 
to those of little faith who were still unconvinced. 

It is characteristic of his hypnotic power over women that 
the "sisters" displayed towards him the fervour of religious 
devotion, intensified by the ardour of a love which tyranny, 
physical cruelty of the most revolting character, and frequent 
causes for jealousy were powerless to damp. One instance of 
this was afforded by his relations with Alexandra Dubrovina, 
whose parents were in easy circumstances and whose out- 
look upon life was of the brightest. This promising girl 
abandoned her home and kindred to seek eternal salvation 
or transient happiness in the house and under the spiritual 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 207 

guidance of the "saint," to whom western peoples would 
give a different name. The girl became passionately attached 
to her teacher although he had taken a wife five years before 
his conversion with whom he was still living and was the 
father of three healthy children. Setting out on a pilgrimage 
to the shrines of Kieff, Rasputin took Alexandra with him, 
bullied her, terrorised her, tortured her, inflicted grievous 
bodily harm on her, and brought her back a mere shadow 
of her former self. Her mother exercising her parental 
authority insisted on her returning home and refused to 
allow her to resume relations with the brutal ruffian who was 
posing as the spokesman of God. But the girl was not to 
be held back. She insisted on the invincible necessity of 
ending her life with Rasputin, for whom her affection was 
unbounded. She could not and would not live without him, 
and declared that neither filial piety nor bolts and bars would 
prevent her from carrying out her decision. Accordingly she 
returned to the prophet and soon afterwards breathed her 
last, whereupon her younger sister, Irene, rushed off to take 
her place, was admitted as a sister, was martyrised in turn 
by the sectarian, pined away, and died in a few months.^ 

In this way Rasputin took advantage of the generous, 
trusting impulse of the untutored young women of the 
village and the province, and impressed the coarse veinings 
of his degenerate nature on their plastic souls. The seed of 
corruption took root and he spanned the community of 
which he was the centre with an arc of light emanating from 
the phosphorescence of moral rottenness. He now began to 
deliver his ''divine message" in clearer terms than before. 
*Tn me," he told his hearers, "is incarnate a particle of the 
Supreme Being. I am an incarnation of God, and only 
through me can you hope to be saved. And the manner of 
your salvation is this: You must be united with me in soul 
and also in body. The virtue that goes out from me is 
the source of light, the destruction of sin." Those who 
assimilated this doctrine — and it was accepted by his entire 
flock — had no difficulty in believing that to a mortal endowed 

*In the year 1908, 



208 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



I 



with these privileges all things were permitted. Communion, 
nay union, with him was regarded as the one road leading to 
eternal happiness ; and they took it cheerfully. 

The liturgic ceremonies, if one may dignify with such a 
name the enormities of Rasputin's sodality, were almost 
identical with those of the Khlysty. ''Sacrificial prayer" 
was the designation given to it by the pontiff. As soon as the 
first star became visible in the sky Rasputin, together with 
the brethren and the sisters, went down to the underground 
room and piled up wood on the hearth. On a tripod in the 
centre of the fire was placed a vessel filled with incense and 
aromatic herbs. Each brother then took his place between 
two sisters and holding hands they all formed a circle and 
moved slowly round the fire, chanting as they went the 
sacramental formula : "Our sin is for the sake of repentance. 
Sin for repentance sake, O Lord!" After a time as the fire 
burned less bright the dance became quicker. Sighs, moans, 
ejaculations were continuous and the pace grew ever brisker. 
At last the logs would flicker and the fire would die. From 
out of the darkness Rasputin's melodious voice would then 
be uplifted: "Brethren, tempt your flesh." Whereupon 
one and all would throw themselves on the floor and the 
revolting orgy began. 

It was a repetition of the procedure of the Khlysty and a 
fresh illustration of the recognised fact that mysticism and 
sensuality are so close akin that one feels tempted to call 
them correlates. 

When judging Rasputin and his followers for these 
iniquities, which were not only repeated at regular intervals 
but were idealised and hallowed as the essence of the law of 
God, it behoves us to remember that a numerous sect exists 
and has long existed in various parts of Russia with the same 
tenets and practices, while certain other denominations are 
more abnormal still. Nor should it be forgotten that 
Rasputin was but a Siberian boor who had acquired a 
slight tincture of information and misinformation respect- 
ing the Church and its doctrines, and was imitating others 
better educated than himself who had sought to consecrate 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 209 

their false sentiments or predominant vices by raising them 
to the level of divine behests and declaring them to be 
conditions of eternal salvation. Rasputin discreetly preached 
his doctrine in Kazan, Saratoff, Samara, and Kieff, and made 
numerous converts there, some of whom I met at different 
times. 

His fellow-townsmen of Pokrovskoye, aware of the nature 
of "sacrificial prayer," were, with few exceptions, indignant. 
They had seen some of their most promising womenfolk 
drawn into the seducer's net and their lives complicated and 
in several cases wrecked, and fearing that other victims 
might follow they cast around for means to rid the village of 
the blasphemous debauchee. A formal protest was drawn 
up and presented to the authorities, in which the petitioners 
set forth that their daughters were being corrupted by 
Rasputin, and that new-born children were being abandoned 
outside huts and houses. But nothing appears to have been 
done by the authorities. 

Meanwhile the rising light, whose fame was fast spreading, 
had, on his journeys, made the acquaintance of a theologian 
of the Orthodox Church and impressed him most favourably. 
In Moscow he was presented to various ladies of wealth, 
position, title, and influence, who marvelled at his shrewd 
remarks, pithy sayings, apposite similes, and intuitive insight 
into character and motives, and also at his religious dis- 
cipline. His appearance in a salon was undoubtedly striking. 
He would enter the room with the air of one who had 
usurped an empire and was striving after the prestige 
requisite to an emperor, attired in peasant's costume, and 
with that scrupulous lack of cleanliness without which his 
garb might be deemed affected. His presence overpowered 
the "lower natures" with which he came in contact. Their 
will sometimes l>ecame numbed forthwith. His soft soulful 
eyes catching theirs poured forth a magnetic flood which 
induced passivity and soul-surrcndcr. Iwcn educated men 
of the world like Prince Yussupoff felt its power. His non- 
conformity to such social conventions as soap, water, and 
brushes impressed many of the weaker vessels and intensified 



210 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

their admiration. The Minister of the Interior, A. N. 
Khvostoff, said: **He is an extraordinary hypnotiser. . . . 
So powerful is his influence that the most matter-of-fact 
police agents surrender to it in a couple of days. Although 
these fellows have, so to say, passed through fire and water 
we have to change them every few days because they fall 
under his power. . . . Further, as I have said already, he 
can stop a flow of blood by his spell." ^ 

Mgr. Hermogen, Bishop of Saratoflf, who was dismissed 
and sent to a monastery through Rasputin, was one of the 
two men who had helped to thrust him into the lime-light 
of the imperial palace. The bishop recently said : ^ "We, 
the representatives of the highest clergy, are more than all 
others to blame for having helped him on. . . . It was we 
who pushed him forward. . . . But to my thinking at the 
outset the divine fire glowed in Rasputin's soul. He was 
imbued with a certain internal sensibility, and I confess 
freely that I experienced his influence on myself. He more 
than once responded to my heart-sorrows, and in this way 
he conquered me, and in the beginning of his career 
conquered others." 

One might write a volume about the man who for some 
years stood behind the throne of the Tsar and, in a very 
limited sense, influenced the destiny of all the Russias, with- 
out satisfactorily explaining to Westerns his strange career 
or fully accounting for his power over people. For all the 
known facts are inadequate to justify either. Nothing that 
Rasputin said will enable one to get at the sources of this 
power, and most of the things which he is alleged to have 
done seem calculated to seal them up. The well from which 
it took its rise was latent, and the words that come nearest 
to expressing it are personal magnetism. Rasputin's eyes 
were fascinating. His tone was often soft and insinuating, 
and his gait was that of one who is conscious of being the 
agent of a preternatural power and needs make no apology 

*Cf. Byloye, No. i (23), 1917, p. 60. 

' Cf . "Bishop Hermogen and Rasputin," Russkoye Slovo, No. 294, p. 3, 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 211 

for his existence or his acts. Self-sufficiency and superiority 
might be read in his every gesture, and yet a careful observer 
would have noted that many of his movements were not 
natural. They were vitiated by a touch of the vulgar 
familiarity of the bailiff or the blackmailer. To the every-day 
type of pithless mankind he communicated his own faith, 
and over many society women avid of change and prone to 
mysticism his sway was unbounded as that of the Pied Piper 
over the children of Hamelin. His habit of mind during this 
first phase of his career was a constant implicit reference to 
those elusive standards of mysticism which so many Russians 
accept without questioning. 

Rasputin took nothing for granted, not even the precepts 
of Christianity. Facts were as mere potter's clay in his hands, 
and he kneaded them to suit ideals which to many became 
idols. The law and the prophets were construed by him as 
by Mohammed, to suit his predominant passion and his 
changing moods, and like the devil he could quote scripture 
for his purposes. For he was a law unto himself and a 
prophet to the weak willed and the degenerates among whom 
he lived and worked. "To the clean,'' I once heard him say, 
"all things are clean," and misgivings, prejudices, and con- 
victions were dissipated by his utterances; yet the practice 
which was under discussion at the time is still brand-marked 
as immoral by the elite of human kind. But Rasputin had 
only to put the more exacting of his hearers under the charm 
of his personality to draw some of them down to the level of 
his purpose. The evil proclivities of the others he supplied 
with divine sanction, transforming moral perversion into a 
virtue. Reasoned discipline was loosened at his words. 

One may fitly leave to Rasputin's biographer the task of 
following his career through the many dreary sloughs 
through which he and his followers — now the unsophisti- 
cated peasants, and later the great ladies of and about the 
imperial court — went floundering. His acquaintance with 
Bishop Thcophan, with the priest John of Cronstadt whose 
"communion" service on our journey to the Crimea I have 
already sketched, and more particularly with the fiery monk 



212 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Iliodor and with Bishop Hermogen stood him in good stead. 
At court he soon filled the gap left by the French spiritist 
Philippe, for whose sake the Tsar had exposed himself ta 
a rebuff from President Felix Faure. The mere touch of 
Rasputin's warm rough hand gently stroking the throbbing 
brow dulled the sharp pain and soothed the feverish brain 
of the Empress and of others. And numerous witnesses who 
have never been his partisans attest that he could charm 
away with his incantations the bleeding from the nose to 
which the heir apparent was subject. If suffering be the 
direct effect of sin, was it not permissible to give to its 
most efficacious cure the name of godliness? Rasputin's 
hypnotic power which he thus employed to ease the Empress* 
megrims and her child's frequent maladies, his prophetic 
sense which enabled him to forecast the future in so far as 
it concerned the imperial family, and the indissoluble way 
in which the destinies of himself, the dynasty, and the Tsardom 
were bound together in his sibylline utterances sank so 
deeply into the morbidly impressible psyche of the Tsaritsa_ 
that she desired nothing better than to become an organ ofl 
his will, and to have those affairs of the Empire in which she 
was personally interested conducted by the light of his 
intelligence. I once heard him say: "It is none of my 
doing that my destiny is interwoven inextricably with that 
of the imperial family. I am only the exponent, not the 
weaver of Fate. And what I have said, I know." In his life, 
characterised by numerous coincidences, the coming to pass 
of this prediction was the most striking of all. 

In Rasputin, hot, impulsive nature though he was, the 
self-assertion of passion was now presumably mastered for 
a while by cool reason and patient discipline, which kept 
him watching and waiting for the expected coherence of 
time with place and opportunity. And when the synthesis 
was complete he utilised it for a purpose inconceivably 
puerile. But that purpose once achieved his self -discipline 
relaxed. Here, as elsewhere, familiarity bred contempt, and 
with the growth of his influence his precautions ceased, 
his predominant passions reasserted their sways, and the 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 213 

inspired prophet became once more a drunken, prating 
debauchee, who befouled with his filthy tongue the names 
not only of the persons whose honour he had robbed, but 
also of the few who kept clear of dishonour. On his entry 
into the world of greatness through the wicket of the Winter 
Palace, Rasputin struck his mysticism several notes above 
the pitch to which the august inmates of the palace were 
accustomed. He spurned the tables and planchettes which 
had rapped or written under the prehensile fingers of 
Philippe or of the two grand duchesses who were in daily 
converse with the spirits of the great Beyond. Rasputin had 
an invisible familiar, one of his own, and he made no secret 
of his conviction that this Mentor dwelt high above the 
principalities and thrones. For to some followers the 
Siberian peasant announced plainly that he was the envoy — 
and hinted that he was also an incarnation — of the Supreme 
Being, wherefore he needed no histrionic paraphernalia to 
put himself in contact with his Inspirer. 

Rasputin's force — the operations and effects of which 
faintly outlined themselves in the annals of the dynasty — 
lay not so much in himself as in the weaknesses of those 
who made him what he became. It is but fair to admit, how- 
ever, that he was materially aided by circumstances which 
to the superstitious were evidences of his preternatural 
mission. After the Empress's repeated hopes and disap- 
pointments, he is said to have foretold with positive certitude 
the birth of a son.^ He subsequently impressed upon the 
lady the conviction that his presence was an indispensable 
condition to the well-being of her little Alexis, and indeed 
to that of the imperial family generally. And various episodes 
in their lives appeared to bear out the l)elief. Among the 
coincidences which invest the prophet's life with the element 
of the fantastic were the occurrence of mishaps whenever 
he was sent away from the court, and the successful appli- 
cation of remedial measures followed by the brightening of 
the prospect as soon as he returned. Thus it was while 

* I had this from one of Rasputin's intimates and several of his follow- 
ers, not from himself. 



214 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

he was away that the heir-apparent fell ill, and in the 
unanimous judgment of the physicians who attended him 
recovery, which was very difficult at best, would be impos- 
sible unless the boy were taken abroad. That meant for the 
Tsaritsa separation either from her husband or from her 
son, both of whom she loved with all the fervour of her 
strange nature. Rasputin on his return, when he learned 
the lady's distress, wrote to the effect that "she must fear 
nothing, take no heed of what the doctors told her, because 
above all doctors is their Maker, and He announces through 
Rasputin's unworthy lips that Alexis will be restored to 
health without journeys or separations. She is to follow his 
directions and it will be done with her according to his 
word.'* And this promise, like so many others far more 
improbable, was redeemed. I saw the boy before and after 
his illness, and from time to time I learned something of 
the methods recommended by Rasputin and followed by 
the sovereigns. These and similar "signs and tokens*' 
impressed all who witnessed them. 

He treated numbers of people for various diseases, and 
according to their own account helped many in marvellous 
ways. The efficacy of his incantations was believed in by all 
who saw him employ them. Even Prince Yussupoff, in 
whose palace he was killed, admits that Rasputin, whom he 
began by disliking, conquered his aversion and eased his 
asthma. The Minister Khvostoff, who is accused of having 
bribed two men to kill him, recognised the power of his 
spells. Stolypin, too, is said to have been hypnotically healed 
by the mystic after the shock he underwent when his house 
was blown up. That weak-nerved women should yield to 
his power is hardly to be wondered at. 

I was personally acquainted with Rasputin, as I was 
acquainted with nearly everybody in Russia who, in my 
judgment, was likely to exert perceptible influence, open or 
covert, on the course of public affairs. I could not ignore 
the man who had the ear of the Tsar and Tsaritsa, who was 
humoured by courtiers and ministers, and seemingly 
respected even by Stolypin himself. He told me some 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 215 

things about himself and many more — ^that were newer 
and to me more interesting — about his religious tenets. I 
wrote them down at the time and had them subsequently 
confirmed. 

Rasputin's career in the Russian capital may be divided 
into two periods, of which the longer one came largely 
under my personal cognisance, while the other is known to 
me only from the narratives of others, and therefore imper- 
fectly and with gaps. The first ends in April, 19 14, when I 
quitted Russia together with Count Witte. The second 
comprehends everything that took place between that date 
and the day of Rasputin's death. During both periods the 
peasant-prophet was accused of many backslidings and 
some crimes, and as the eminent leader of the Octobrist 
party, Gutchkoff, acquired extraordinary popularity by a 
tremendous onslaught in the Duma against him and against 
the court that protected him, these accusations were every- 
where received as proven. It is well to remember, however, 
that in political crises the haste with which damning charges 
are gathered and hurled against the biggest targets that offer 
themselves explains the lack of substance which so often 
renders them useless as historical materials. Nor do they, as 
a rule, inflict very dangerous wounds in Russia, where the 
line between crime and misfortune is shadowy. As far as 
my knowledge went, during the first period of his court 
career, Rasputin sedulously eschewed giving advice about 
any matters except ecclesiastical, but in dealing with these 
he generally had his way. Bishops were consecrated or 
transferred at his suggestion, and he at last went so far as to 
have first M. Izvolsky's brother and then M. Samarin 
removed from the ministerial post of Ober-Procurator of 
the Most Holy Synod on grounds which I am unable to 
approve. 

Gutchkoff *s historic attack on the man and, through him, 
on the dynasty gave currency to ideas which seemed most 
useful to the reform parties of the Duma at the moment, 
but are of no avail to the historian. To launch the thunder- 
bolt of moral reprobation against a clever historian like 



216 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Rasputin was incongruous from any point of view but thJl 
political, and even in this domain it was not free from 
danger, as the sequel has shown. Even the court, which was 
most directly aimed at, could contemplate it from none 
other. For the disquieting side of this pseudo-spiritual 
movement was that it consisted of ideas, emotions, cravings, 
and practices which were widespread throughout the Tsar- 
dom, and many of which lay at the roots of all popula^i 
religion there. One could not well condemn the Tsar* 
therefore, without at the same time anathematising tens of 
thousands of the intelligentsia and scores of millions of thf 
peoples who acknowledged his rule. ' 

Gutchkoff's thesis was that Rasputin swayed the Tsaritsa, 
who ruled the Autocrat of all the Russias, and was therefore 
an ignoble deceiver and a dangerous adviser. He put it to 
the Duma that the nation was in peril. I made exhaustive 
inquiries into the truth of these allegations at the time, for I 
then had ways and means of investigating them. But I 
could find no evidence that the Siberian peasant had — with 
a single exception — ever interfered in any way at any time 
in matters other than ecclesiastical. And continuing my 
research down to April, 19 14, I was forced to the conclusion 
that Rasputin had only once made his influence felt in the 
political domain. Only once. And then, I am bound to 
say, it was superlatively beneficent. As I heard his own 
evidence on the subject as well as that of cabinet ministers 
and court dignitaries, I have good grounds for stating that 
it was Rasputin who moved the Tsar to turn a deaf ear to 
the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch, who advocated a 
bellicose policy, and persuaded him to steer clear of the 
war for which he had been feverishly making ready.^ Into. 
the charlatan's motives for this advice I am unable tc 
enter. 

This evidence of mine offers no extenuation of Ras 
putin's iniquities nor of the folly of those who connivec 
at them. It is neither more nor less than the statemeni 
of a fact. 

*The details of this story are interesting. 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 217 

During the latter period of his career, which began after 
my departure from Russia, and continued until his tragic 
death, Rasputin appears to have had a hand in some of the 
poHtical as well as most of the ecclesiastical changes that 
took place, and while giving pastors to the Church, to have 
allowed the old Adam, who had apparently died in himself 
at the time of his conversion, to revive in all his pristine 
hideousness. A drunkard and a profligate in the eyes of the 
profane, he still remained a man of God, a wonder-worker, 
and a prophet to the initiated of the court circle, of which 
he had now become the centre. All the reformers and most 
of the parliamentary parties outside regarded him as the 
symbol of all that was unjust, oppressive, and infamous in 
the autocracy. And this was his real significance. He was a 
symbol for the anti-autocratic parties. But apart from the 
utter incongruity of allowing such a clumsy mummer to 
have a voice in any of the affairs of Church or State, it has 
not yet been proved that his influence on the destinies of 
the Empire was as profound or far-reaching as is alleged. 
To me Rasputin seems to have been but one of the symptoms 
of the disease of which the Tsardom was dying. 

He was a reagent that united what was best in the country 
against the dark powers of which he stood forth as the 
exponent. The Duma, the press, the nobility, the zemstvos, 
were all determined to put an end to the outrageous farce 
which was being enacted in the midst of a world tragedy, 
and to immobilise the wire-pullers who were exploiting it 
for their ends. Rasputin's career was the rcductio ad absitr- 
diim of the Tsarist State. It focussed multitudinous evils 
and seemed to give to the many-headed bureaucracy what 
the Roman emperor desired for his peoples, a single neck 
that might be severed at a blow. 

Several plots were hatched against his life at various 
stages of his career. Of these by far the most dangerous was 
engineered by a single person — a jealous woman who had 
believed in him, lived with him, and loved him for years, 
Ijcfore she l)ccame the admirer of his enemy, the monk 
Iliodor One day in the streets she phniged a knife into his 



218 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

abdomen and narrowly escaped lynching at the hands of 
his worshippers. Rasputin's wound was grievous and he 
lay for many weeks in hospital, but his hale, robust nature 
finally pulled him through. His fair assailant, K. Gusseva, 
whose hero he had been for years, declared at the police 
station when charged with the crime that he was no better 
than a seducer of women, and that death was what the 
impostor had merited. She was sent to a madhouse. On 
another occasion a conspiracy was said to have been devised 
by no less a personage than the Minister of the Interior ^ 
whose testimony I adduced above respecting the marvellous 
powers of the thaumaturge. This responsible member of 
the government, who had often told his friends that Ras- 
putin's proper place was not with the Emperor of Russia 
but with the Emperor of Heaven, is accused of having 
suborned the unfrocked monk Iliodor to assassinate the 
Starets. It was this same Iliodor who some years before 
helped to introduce Rasputin to the court and had latterly 
anathematised him as a third-rate anti-Christ. But this 
plot was revealed before it could be executed, and the erring 
minister was restored to private life. 

Around the last conspiracy which terminated the seer's 
career legend has spun a web of mystery, patriotism, and 
romance which savours of the Florence of the Medici. 
Nearly all Russia applauded the heroic deed which sent the 
drunken, obscene satyr to his last account at a banquet 
worthy of Lorenzo the Magnificent. This universal and 
enthusiastic approval of a bloody act of treachery is, in my 
judgment, one of the most characteristic traits of Russian 
public opinion and sentiment. The attitude of the nation, 
which not only forgave but eulogised the crime for the sake 
of the murderers' supposed motives, gives one the measure 
of public morality and of the rottenness of the State which 
could no longer exist without the help of murder and 
treachery in high quarters and in low. 

Strange echoes of mediaeval times are awakened by 
Rasputin's life story, which reminds one of the hero of 
*A. N. Khvostoff. 



RASPUTIN— A SYMBOL 219 

Calderon's Life a Dream. The worshippers who revered 
him as a saint, the court ladies who, at the end of their 
letters, kissed the "dear little hands and feet" of the 
slovenly, unkempt satyr, the dignitaries and ministers who 
sent him respectful telegrams, the bishops and archbishops 
who pushed him into the limelight of the court, all knew 
his antecedents. They were aware that he had been publicly 
flogged for horse-stealing, that he had been arrested for 
rape, and that a charge of perjury was hanging over his 
head. Deliberately ignoring the conclusions to be drawn 
from these facts, they one and all recognised him as their 
spiritual leader. 

In Britain and France the public is unable to understand 
how the lofty, the base, the spiritual, and the sensual can 
thus be interwoven together by people endowed with 
reason and moral conscience. The answer is that the 
Russian psyche is capable of other syntheses even more 
difficult to understand than this. Who, for instance, before 
the war would have believed it possible for a Russian 
government of brotherhood and goodwill to make peace 
with the enemy and wage war on their own brethren, to 
abolish capital punishment and inaugurate indiscriminate 
mass massacres, to preach universal freedom and punish 
expressions of opinion unfavourable to itself, to proclaim 
government by the people and to chastise the people for 
expressing its legitimate wishes, to lay down the right of 
every nation to govern itself and to trample on the Ukrainians 
and the Finns for attempting to avail themselves of the 
principle? Westerns have not yet learned to understand the 
psychology of Russia. 

Neither can they put themselves in the position of serious 
Russians who, like the Minister Khvostoff and Bishop 
Hermogen, seem to believe in the virtue of his incantations 
and the precision of his second sight. Only Westerns of 
intense susceptibility, who have lived in the country among 
the people and as one of the people, can come to an under- 
standing of their old-world mysticism which pictures our 
lives as stretching before and behind us into dim regions 



220 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

void of time and space. It was through that medium that 
his countr}men viewed Rasputin. 

The strangest of the many coincidences which stamped 
him in their eyes as a seer and a sorcerer was that which 
may be discovered between his most audacious prophecy 
and the sequel to his tragic death. He had told the Tsar and 
Tsaritsa, and repeated to many others as well as to me, that 
his destiny was entwined with the destinies of the Romanoffs 
and the Tsardom, and that his death would bring doom and 
disaster to them all. And hardly was his lifeless body thrust 
under the ice when the Empress was taken ill. Soon after- 
wards her son and two of her daughters were seized with 
illness and confined to bed. Then the sovereign was deposed, 
insulted, imprisoned, the army dissolved, the Empire 
abolished, and mighty Russia broken up into a number of 
fragmentary powerless States into which no new life-current 
has entered. What ancient oracle or prophet can point to so 
many fateful predictions accomplished ? 

Rasputin, had he been the ambitious or the calculating 
politician portrayed by Gutclikoff and other parliamentary 
orators, would have taken the first revelation of his power 
over the autocrat for an intimation to use it to the fullest 
extent for the common good, or for some great purpose of 
his own, and would have composed the remainder of his 
career to oneness with that aim. But he did nothing of the 
kind. He had no great purpose, good or evil, nothing but 
insatiable thirst for coarsest pleasures of sense. He reminded 
me of the Ukrainian of whom the story ran that he ex- 
claimed, "How I should love to be Tsar. I know what I 
then would do. I would steal a hundred roubles and from 
early morning until late at night I would gorge myself on 
bacon. Ah! if only I were Tsar!'* 



1 



CHAPTER XIII 

Russia's International Relations 

Between the principles underlying the foreign policy of 
the Tsardom and those that shaped the public and private 
conduct of its authorised trustees there was an unmis- 
takable family likeness. The background of the curious 
events recorded in this chapter of Russia's international 
relations — in so far as these were the results of deliberate 
endeavours on the part of the Petersburg Foreign Office — 
may be recalled in outline by many readers. The West 
European beheld these occurrences through a roseate haze, 
which made the Tsardom seem the one deep gambler among 
European States and the most astute. And as for the tactics 
of the wire-pullers in Petersburg, they were taken to l>e so 
deft and efficacious that a veritable wizard could hardly 
detect in them anything to better. However desultory or 
aimless circumstance or folly might make the intercourse of 
the remaining powers with each other, Russia's course was 
believed to be steadfastly directed towards the unchanging 
far-off goal fixed for her by the genial Peter. Faith in the 
depth of the Tsar's designs and also in the inexhaustible 
strength of their countless battalions remained unshaken 
even after the Russian defeat in Manchuria. And yet the 
previous war against, and victory over, the Turks in the 
reign of Alexander II. afforded ample proof that neither 
assumption was well grounded. Moreover, no one who had 
an opportunity of scrutinising at fairly close quarters the 
procession of statesmen who glirjcd across the Russian stage 
from Gortchakoff to Sazonoff could discover in the men any 
(lualities more genial than average mother-wit, or any aims 
in their political strategy more subtle than the attainment of 
certain .secondary objects, the utilisation of casual oppor- 
tunities, the fulfilment of a per.sonal desire of the sovereign, 

321 



222 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

or even the wreaking of vengeance on a rival statesman. In 
vain we ransack the records of the past fifty years for in- 
disputable evidences of the steady political purpose for 
which down to the March revolution all Europe gave them 
credit. It is humiliating to realise how easily legends like 
that which was woven about the sagacity, self-discipline, and 
perseverance of the rulers of the Tsardom can be foisted on 
mankind as verdicts of history. 

During the past three reigns Russia's foreign policy was 
made up largely of aims believed at first to be vital, pursued 
for a time with vigour, and finally discarded as harmful. 
And in the methods employed from Gortchakoff's death 
down to M. Izvolsky's advent to power one finds little that 
indicates grasp of fact, breadth of vision, or capacity for 
construction. And as for the thankless task of grafting 
ethical principles upon the stock of Russian politics, it would 
not seem to have been undertaken or contemplated by any 
one of the ministers who transacted the international affairs 
of the Tsardom within the period mentioned. Not to go 
back further than the year 1894, I can distinctly call to mind 
an experience I had in Constantinople — one of a long series. 
I had gone thither to inquire into the truth of the reports 
about a massacre of Armenians which it was alleged had 
taken place in the district of Sassun. Before I started I had 
been assured that there was no truth in the rumours. As 
Professor Vamberg of Budapest was one of those who 
vouched for this reassuring statement I felt disposed to 
accept it provisionally. Before starting for Armenia, how- 
ever, I called on a Russian statesman with whom I was on 
very friendly terms and requested him to confide to me the 
truth. He said, ''I will talk to you as a friend. What I say 
is for your guidance, not for publication. The massacres 
did take place. I will give you some ghastly details, for the 
accuracy of which I vouch. We have Armenians in prison 
for conspiring against the Sultan. They could not honestly 
do otherwise. Your government has asked — and I may say 
asked somewhat insistently — for an international inquiry 
with a view to a collective intervention of the powers. That 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 223 

may be a highly ethical step to take, but believe me it is not 
a wise one. It will do harm to the Armenians.^ The French 
government and ours, being Christian and European, have 
agreed to participate in the step suggested by Queen 
Victoria's advisers. That will give employment to the 
embassies and consulates of the interested powers. But 
your ambassador in Constantinople fancies that we shall also 
join in putting pressure on the Sultan. That is an allusion. 
We have no such intention. Indeed, we are resolved to 
eschew all action joint and isolated. When the inquiry is 
over, which will establish the guilt of the Moslem popula- 
tion of Kurdistan and, I must add, of the Stambul cabinet, 
the work of Russia and France will be over together with it. 
It will have no practical consequences, and the Sultan knows 
it. There, now you have the truth." 

But Sir Philip Currie did not know it. And when having 
cautiously questioned him on the subject I received his 
answer that the three governments would force Abdul 
Hamid to rue the day w^hen he prescribed mass massacre, 
and to change his tack, I ventured to inquire, *'Are you 
quite sure of that?" "Yes, do you doubt it?" "I confess 
I am not very hopeful." "Well, allow me to be so, and 
please give me credit for knowing something more about the 
matter than you do." I fear I did not give him credit for 
knowing the only thing that mattered just then. I at once 
went to Armenia, disguised as a Russian general, collected 
evidence about the massacres, made a map of the country in 
which they occurred, and had the melancholy satisfaction 
to see my friend the eminent statesman's forecast borne out 
by events. Thus it was Russia's interest to allow this cr}'ing 
sin against humanity to go unpunished in order that the 
process of decomposition in the Ottoman Empire might con- 
tinue unchecked. This attitude was in strict accordance, not 
indeed with any testament left by Peter the Great, but with 
the whole spirit of the Tsarist State from its first foundation 
down to March, 19 17, when it was fighting for the goods if 

* It did them great harm. Soon after I left Armenia most of my Ar- 
menian friends were massacred, and not my friends only. 



224 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

not the good of some of the lesser nationahties Hke Poland 
and expecting Constantinople for its reward. 

Russia's foreign policy in the past, whatever its real 
motives, may therefore be summarily described in the light 
of its effects as ruinous "protection" of the feeble. It wasi 
the lethal hug of the polar bear. She would shield the gov- 
ernment of a weaker neighbour from the immediate conse- 
quences of its own folly and enable it to go on misgoverning] 
its subjects, thwarting attempts at internal reform, financial 
and administrative. The body politic would thus be left to* 
decompose until it entered upon a stage sufficiently advanced 
to allow of it being digested almost without an effort. Hence 
the common argument derived from her alleged peaceful 
disposition, put forward by her partisans in England and 
elsewhere — w^ho claim that she had no intention to annex 
this or that strip of territory, to take, say. Port Arthur until 
forced by Germany's aggression in Kiao Chow — however 
true in fact, is devoid of force. For part of her plan was 
precisely to respect the technical frontiers of the country 
which she hoped to subdue and to refrain from snatching 
a part in order ultimately to obtain the whole. The seizure 
of a country bit by bit would only have awakened feelings 
of jealousy and other unchristian sentiments in the hearts of 
covetous neighbours. As a cynical diplomatist once ex- 
pressed himself, "It is the way of the vulture with the dying 
ass: leave the body until it is sufficiently decomposed and 
then swallow it all; the vulture's only fear being lest the 
jackal should come upon the scene and devour the animal 
before the process is completed." It is thus that Georgia, 
Persia, Turkey, China, Korea, were dealt with. 

Since the partition of Poland, to which the Empress 
Maria Theresa once alluded regretfully as "cette division si 
injiiste et si incgale/' Russia's protective policy has undergone 
no material change. Catherine, who was then the ruler of 
Muscovy, would fain have left Poland untouched, scrupu- 
lously respecting the technical frontiers of the kingdom 
while effectually hindering the abolition of the veto and the 
introduction of any reform of the constitution. She was 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 225 



Jbnvinced that when Poland had stewed long enough in its 
own juice, Muscovy might then step in and enjoy the 
banquet all alone. It was with this object that she bribed a 
number of unprincipled Poles to keep the abuses unchanged. 

tit Frederick, seeing through the plan, baffled it and, 
riously enough, in almost the same way in which his suc- 
cessor Wilhelm II. discerned the policy which Russia was 
trsuing in China, and foiled that by obtaining Kiao Chow 
d forcing the hand of the Tsar. 

Only once has this method undergone a modification, and 
for that there were special reasons. Bulgaria was not 
methodically ''protected" in the special sense of the term. 
Frank Russian diplomatists were wont to explain that 
ipiapter of Russian history thus: "We have only two ways 
of dealing with weaker nations, and they are exemplified in 
our treatment of Georgia and Bulgaria. The kingdom of 
Georgia came to us and asked for an alliance. We made it. 
Some time afterwards the Georgians fell upon evil days, 
^eing attacked by Persia they claimed our active help as 
H[uals and allies. But we answered that we were too busy 
elsewhere, and left them to their fate. Thereupon the 
^ersians fell upon them and killed two men out of every 
P^ree, so that the nation was literally bleeding to death. Then 
the Georgians came to us a second time, now no longer as 
equals and allies, but as humble suppliants. 'Help us,' 
they said, *not as friends aid friends, but as masters rescue 
their slaves.' And this time we helped them effectually and 
absorbed their country over and above. But in the case of 
the Bulgarians we committed an unpardonable blunder. 
They appealed to us as brothers, and instead of waiting 
until they also had lost two men out of every three, we freed 
them from the Turkish yoke without more ado, after which 
the little brothers developed into enemies. We shall not 
make the same mistake with the Macedonians or the 
Armenians." 

tAnd the system carried out in Georgia was the same 
at was iKMng tried in Turkey and elsewhere. Thus 
"protection" was the main principle which underlay the 




226 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 1 

Hunkiar Skelessi Treaty concluded with the Porte.^ By the 
terms of this agreement Russia undertook to "protect" 
Turkey from all maritime foes, while that empire was 
mouldering slowly away. The Sultan was humoured, 
pampered, and his throne propped while his regime was ruin- 
ing his people. Armenians, Slavs, and even Mohammedans 
were revolted by the system. The navy dwindled to a mere 
name; the soldiers were unpaid; fortresses were left with- 
out guns; officials were literally forced to live by extortion. 
The Ottoman Empire would soon have been ripe for the 
vulture if the jackal had not come unawares to feast on the 
remains of the body politic. Germany looked with longing 
upon Asia Minor and created commercial interests there, and 
the semi-atrophied organs were galvanised by the breath of 
new life. 

The tripartite Eastern tangle which so long exercised the 
ingenuity, and drew out the least estimable traits, of Europe's 
diplomatists was to a large extent twisted and coiled by the 
Tsars and their State Secretaries. In this respect there was 
no essential difference in the treatment applied to the Near, 
the Middle, and the Far East. The patient was first coaxed 
or bullied into making a will — in diplomatic language, a 
secret treaty — in Russia's favour, was then forbidden to 
call in a doctor, and in some cases forced to sip slow poison 
in lieu of efficacious medicaments. It was thus that as far 
back as 1723 Muscovy undertook to "protect" Persia 
against the Afghans in return for a secret treaty making over 
to her the Persian provinces on the Caspian. And ever since 
then, with some pauses and a few failures, the Tsars went on 
fostering the process of gangrene which was eating away 
the energies, material and moral, of a people, never indeed 
progressive or promising, but hardly deserving such a 
miserable fate. 

The results were striking. Four Persian provinces- 

Mazenderan, Khorassan, Azerbeijan, and Ghilan — fell as 

completely under Russia's thumb as if they were actually 

occupied by her troops. The administrative wires were 

* Cf. Contemporary Review, July, 1904. 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 227 

pulled by her representatives in Teheran and the Shah was 
enabled to live in luxurious vice while his people toiled and 
moiled in squalid misery. Persia was poor, its bureaucracy 
corrupt, all officers being bought and sold at the expense of 
the masses, justice was poisoned at its source, law was a 
myth, the spendthrift Shah was arbitrary and cruel, and the 
people periodically famine-stricken. And the Tsars, whose 
heaven-sent mission was to diffuse Christian light and truth 
and justice, invoked the sacredness of treaties and insisted on 
these things remaining as they were. 

Lord Salisbury made a praiseworthy effort to change them 
by identifying Britain's interests with Persia's material and 
moral well-being. As the Shah's government needed money 
he volunteered to advance a certain sum and to consent to 
Russia supplying as much again on the express condition 
that the proceeds of the loan should be spent on the nation's 
needs. The exchange of views and shaping of measures to 
this end were going slowly forward between London and 
Petersburg when, one day, the British Premier learnt to his 
dismay that the Russian Finance Minister had surreptiti- 
ously struck up an arrangement with the Shah, supplied him 
not merely with Russia's own quota of the loan, but with all 
the money that was to be allotted by both governments, and 
(let him spend two out of the four million pounds on the 
gratification of his personal whims and vices. And Persia's 
needs? Ways of communication were peremptorily required, 
but the Tsars not only connived at the Shah's ministers, who 
ignored this, but positively forbade the construction of a 
single line and, indeed, vetoed every attempt to better the 
country economically. They recognised the need for rail- 
' ways, but seeing themselves unable to afford the necessary 
funds for the purpose would brook no attempt on the part of 
others to provide them. And when Lord Salisbury asked the 
Tsar's Foreign Secretary for an explanation, this official 
made answer that it was the Finance Minister who had taken 
the measures complained of, and over him the Foreign Office 
' had, of course, no authority. In Turkey the same dog-in-the- 
manger policy and Spenlow and Jorkins procedure were 



228 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

persisted in down to a few years before the war, and even 
Russia's faithful ally France, occasionally losing patience, 
uttered plangent representations and humble requests and 
was grateful for even the slight concessions which M. 
Sazonoff made when he was minister. 
V Under that treatment the Persian body politic was rotting 
limb by limb, until M. Izvolsky taking over the portfolio of 
Foreign Affairs ordered his diplomatic subalterns to turn 
over a new leaf and supplied a fresh proof of the impotence 
of individual officials to modify the deep-rooted instincts of 
Tsarism. For the most part the Russian employees in Persia 
offered passive resistance to their new head. In par- 
ticular the Tsar's minister at Teheran, Hartwig, deliberately 
perpetuated the abominable system of his predecessors in 
spite of the expostulations and remonstrances of his chief. 
People asked how he dared thus oppose the Foreign Office on 
which he depended. The answer was that he was encouraged 
and put up to it by the Tsar himself. And when at last M. 
Izvolsky extorted permission to recall the rebellious minister, 
Nicholas II. distinguished him, decorated him, told him that 
his was the only policy that the Russian nation could pursue 
with dignity and profit, and let it be known that it was with 
the utmost reluctance that he gave way to Izvolsky. There- 
upon he entrusted Hartwig with the most responsible post 
in the Balkan peninsula. 

This criticism of the demoralising action of the Tsardom 
in Persia, I should like to add, must not be taken to commit 
me to any theory which would recognise the present fitness 
of the Persians for a parliamentary regime. The Persians 
have lived for ages under grinding despotisms and their 
mental and moral temper, warped in that crushing mill, 
renders it temporarily difficult for them to enter into the 
spirit of the democratic regime in vogue in the West. I 
am aware that this view may be deemed erroneous — here- 
tical — but there is a vast array of incontrovertible facts 
to support it. Russia profited in her own way by the 
helplessness of the Iranian people and Britain followed at 
a distance. 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 229 

Many years ago I gave expression to these strictures on 
Russia's methods of shaping her intercourse with nations, 
and I stated that in Europe there were "still two predatory 
States, the Tsardom and Germany." ^ Discussing the chances 
of an Anglo-Russian understanding for which I was then 
zealously working I wrote: *The difficulties in the way are 
of a twofold character: the one formal, emanating from the 
awkward fact that Russia has come to look upon engage- 
ments entered into by her Foreign Minister as partial in 
extent and temporary in duration; the others have their roots 
in the fundamental policy hitherto pursued by the Muscovite 
Empire, the character of which seems incompatible with any 
parchment limitations." ^ And characterising the government 
of the country at its best I described it as "composed of 
public servants of his Majesty the Tsar, each of whom con- 
scientiously strives to further what he deems to be the interests 
of his imperial master in the way which he considers most 
efficacious and without reference to the views, aims, or obliga- 
tions of his colleagues." ^ 

But the governments and the press of France and Britain 
took a much more sanguine view of the Tsardom and 
condescendingly bore with me as an "incorrigible but well- 
meaning pessimist." France had gone so far in her friend- 
ship for the great ally as to shut her eyes to the massacres 
of the Armenians and her ears to the piteous appeals for 
help made by the ill-starred population of Macedonia. 

The methods applied in Russia to international affairs 
whenever a foreign government complained of a breach of 
treaty or an unredeemed promise I likened to that followed 
by the firm of Spenlow and Jorkins. Each minister would 
lay the responsibility on some colleague whose engagements 
bound only himself. It was thus that when Hayashi called 
on the Tsar's Foreign Secretary, Muravieff, and protested 
against the despatch of Russian military instructors to Korea, 
the answer came pat: "That is a step that was taken by 
my predecessor. I have nothing whatever to do with that.*' 

' Cf . Contemporary Review, June, 1904, p. 803. 

*Op. cit. p. 812. 'Ibidem, 



230 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

In all these cases there was no central government, only a 
number of isolated State departments not one of which 
bound Russia or could pledge her word. 

Thus duplicity and guile were the principal means 
employed in peace time to effect or prepare for that terri- 
torial expansion which was a standing postulate of the self- 
preservation of the Tsardom. Aggrandisement was being 
achieved gradually, almost imperceptibly, by means of rail- 
ways, of secret treaties, of money lent to needy governments 
by the Tsar's ministers who themselves had to borrow it 
from France. And on the top of all this came intimidation. 
"My government," a Russian diplomatist at Pekin, Tokio, 
or Seoul would virtually say, "represents a people of 
160,000,000 and disposes of military and naval forces in 
proportion. If, therefore, you are bent on quarrelling with 
us you know what to expect.'' And the crestfallen diplomatist 
of the little State would give way at the green table lest his 
people should have to give way on the field of battle. In 
other words, he was beaten by bluff. In this way modern 
Muscovy long steered clear of great wars while harvesting 
in material successes which no other power could expect to 
win by mere diplomacy. In this way, too, she hoped to get 
the better of Japan, but that power, refusing to accept 
counters for current coin, at last and most unwillingly 
challenged her to carry out her implied threats, with the 
results which the world has witnessed. The other predatory 
State, Germany, put the same method into practice for over 
a generation until Russia at last cried, "Halt," but unlike 
the Tsardom, Germany's military strength was equal to, 
if anything greater than, her prestige and influence in 
diplomacy. 

Between Russia and Britain a binding agreement existed 
and exists respecting Afghanistan. At the time of the Boer 
War, however, the Tsar's government came out with the 
theory that that covenant, having been struck up at a time 
when things were different, had ceased to be applicable, 
because "circumstances destroy the binding force of com- 
pacts," exactly the doctrine of the other predatory State, 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 231 

Germany. Consequently the Petersburg Foreign Office 
signified its desire to enter into direct relations with the Emir. 
And accommodating action to theory, a letter to the same 
effect was despatched by the Tsar's ministers to the Emir's 
agent in Bokhara who sent it on unopened to his master. And 
at the same time Russia mobilised troops and transferred 
4000 men from Tiflis to Kushk on the Afghan frontier. 
The Emir having kept the letter for some time in Kabul at 
last had it forwarded to Downing Street. Witte intervened, 
hindered what bade fair to become an expedition against 
Herat, and at my request announced that the real object of 
the mobilisation was but to make an experiment, not to 
inaugurate a campaign. 

The Tsar's Plot to seize the Heights 
of the Upper Bosphorus 

One of the most striking exhibitions of the temper of 
Tsarism occurred in the year 1896. I guardedly touched 
upon it several years later in an article which was necessarily 
euphemistic. But people refused to credit the story because 
it tended to throw a slur upon the Tsar whose loyalty was 
above question in England. Probably at no time and in no 
country since the reign of Louis XIV. in France have current 
events been so highly coloured, embellished, and grouped in 
such an unreal light as during the first ten years of the reign 
of Nicholas II. The French press, with the exception of a 
few uninfluential journals, was wont to extol him to the skies. 
In the comments passed on the various public manifestations 
of his policy one looked in vain for traces of average historic 
vision. Every move of the Petersburg government that could 
be construed as a cultural advance was eulogised and ascribed 
to the initiative of the high-minded monarch whose political 
wisdom was implicitly taken to be almost equal to his power, 
'vhereas deeds that could not be dovetailed with this fulsome 
theory were attributed to malevolent agents or boldly denied. 
In Great Britain a somewhat similar, if less inflexible, 
attitude was observed and it cost me repeated and strenuous 
efforts to enlighten public opinion. When my pseudonymous 



232 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

article on the Tsar appeared in the Quarterly Review, its 
statements, tone, and conclusions were unctuously depre- 
cated by a press accustomed to envisage the Russian ruler 
as an indispensable member of that happy family of mon- 
archs who would in time lead Europe sensibly nearer to the 
cultural goal. He was the world's peace-preserver and much 
else, and only a Thersites could thus misread his acts. The 
artificial and precarious character of the apparent unity of 
his Empire, the rapacious instincts of the State, the morbid 
conceit and profound ignorance of its head, who would insist 
on transforming what was good into bad and on turning bad 
to worse by his constant intermeddling, were unsuspected or 
ignored by the panegyrists, English and French, of the Rus- 
sian Tsar. It was they who prodigally conferred immortality 
on this pitiful specimen of a ruler, leader, or reformer, and 
pleaded in justification his high humanitarian instincts, his 
selfless devotion to the common good, and the courage with | 
which he strove to realise one of the loftiest politico-social con- 
ceptions on record — that of establishing general peace on earth 
by quickening the noblest instincts of individuals and peoples j 
at the first Hague Conference. 

Every statement, every opinion that ran counter to this 
preconceived theory was thrust aside as malevolent or un- 
founded. Time and again I published facts that pulverised 
the accepted doctrine and ruined the conventional portrait, 
but the articles embodying these unorthodox views were 
either blamed as iconoclastic or wholly ignored, and more 
than once systematic efforts were put forth to have me 
punished by the Tsar's government for my temerity. 

Doubtless the policies of Nicholas II. were numerous, 
and it was not always easy to reconcile one with the other. 
But they were all in keeping with the instincts of Tsarism | 
or with the impulses and intuitions of its insignificant head, ] 
who did not always act with an intelligible aim and generally 
went to work without a measured forecast. The order of 
intelligence revealed by most of his international schemes 
differed nowise from that which was manifested in his 
relations with his ministers and courtiers. Most of these 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 233 

designated it by the name of cunning. A noteworthy illus- 
tration of the policy, which likewise throws a strong light on 
the politician, occurred at the close of the year 1896. At that 
time the most brilliant, cultured, and easy-going of the Tsar's 
foreign secretaries was dead.^ His successor, M. Shishkin, 
was one of those every-day bureaucrats who lived in a world 
of green tables, dusty parchments, sere and yellow leaves, 
and are termed by the French ronds de cuir. His intelligence 
w^as absorbed by memory, and his initiative paralysed by 
precedent. It was when this colourless official was acting- 
Minister of Foreign Affairs that an unqualifiable conspiracy 
against international troth and a menace to the peace of 
Europe was hatched by the Tsar and frustrated at the last 
minute by two statesmen of bitterly hostile camps, of whom 
each honestly regarded the other as a scourge of the Russian 
people. Witte and Pobiedonostseff alone in this environment 
joined hands to restrain Nicholas H. from an act which would 
probably have plunged Europe in war, and deserves to stand 
on record as one of the most damaging counts in the long 
indictment against Tsarism. 

In that memorable year Russia's star was in the ascendant. 
For her prestige was incomparably greater than her power 
and her specific gravity enormously overrated by most 
State chancelleries. She easily overawed her rivals, all of 
whom took her at her own valuation. Witte, the Finance 
Minister, who had a representative of his own in every State 
department and who actually wielded much greater power 
than his imperial master, had just sown the seeds from which 
he might reasonably expect inexhaustible markets and a 
flourishing colony in the Far East. All that he now needed 
and asked for was peace and foreign money so that the 
Tsardom might continue to live on its prestige without being 
obliged actually to exercise its military strength. 

Lobanoff during his vshort-lived activity had made per- 
ceptible progress and established his reputation. He had 
removed the soreness l)etween the Tsardom and Bulgaria, 
struck up a political friendship with h>rdinand of Coburg, 

* Lobanoff- Rostoffsky died suddenly in August, iSij6. 



234 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

bettered Russia's neighbourly relations with Austria- 
Hungary, and maintained in the northern Balkans her 
influence well-nigh intact. In the Far East also the Tsardom 
towered aloft like a giant among pigmies. Witte had torn up 
the treaty of Shimonoseki, deprived Japan of the fruits of her 
victory, imposed a ruinous friendship on the Chinese, and 
obtained the valuable concession for the construction of the 
Chinese Eastern Railway.^ Li Hung Chang was at the back 
of the all-powerful Russian Finance Minister, and Japan was 
disconsolate at the thought that Korea had been earmarked 
for the Tsardom. Witte handled the Orientals ^ deftly; some 
of their leaders he drove, others he lured into the penfold of 
"protected" peoples of whom the Tsar was the titular 
shepherd. All that he wanted for the success of his system 
was a firm economic foothold, industrial concessions, the 
laying of iron rails, and the forging of golden chains. Count 
Hayashi writes: *T could not do otherwise than admire his 
ability as a statesman. Had his programme been carried out, 
as he at first proposed, what would not have been the 
result ?" ^ To my thinking the result would have been 
what it has since become, supremely disappointing. For do 
what he might the Tsarist State could not long survive into 
an era of law, collective effort, and responsibility. It was 
foredoomed to break up. I once likened it to the Bologna 
phial of unannealed glass which may be flung to the ground, 
struck with a hammer, or heavily pressed without under- 
going the least change, yet flies into thousands of little 
splinters if scratched with a diamond or a sharp flint. The 
surface of the phial, hard as crystal, holds fast the inner 
molecules, which tend to fly apart but keep together so long 
as the adamantine surface remains intact. And the surface 
of the Tsardom would have been scratched by the first 

^September, 1896. 

'It may not be superfluous to repeat what I said before: that I do 
not include the Japanese in these allusions to Eastern or Asiatic races. 
They stand in the forefront of civilised peoples of the world, and what- 
ever changes may yet be in store for humanity, are practically certain to 
be among the most influential factors of ordered progress, 

• Cf. Secret Memoirs of Count Hayashi, p. 94. 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 235 

democratic institution and the molecules would have been 
scattered to the winds of heaven. 

The Tsar's ambassador in Constantinople at the time 
of the story was M. Nelidoff, with whom I was well ac- 
quainted : an average, vigilant, ambitious diplomatist who 
managed, together with his German colleague there, to hit 
it off with the Sultan. In the previous year he had fought a 
fierce diplomatic battle against the British ambassador, Sir 
Philip Currie, on the subject of the Armenian massacres, 
after which their mutual relations remained strained. As 
already narrated. Queen Victoria's representative was per- 
suaded that if the charges brought against the Sultan were 
proven by the international commission at Mush, diplomatic 
action of a drastic nature would follow as a matter of 
course. I had been authoritatively informed in advance 
that this was a gratuitous assumption, that nothing was 
further from the intentions of the Russian government, 
and that, whatever the merits of the question, the French 
cabinet, ever duly ductile, would follow the lead of its great 
ally. And that is what actually happened. A ridiculous 
tale was also spread in various parts of Central and Eastern 
Europe that the excitement over the Armenians had been 
designedly got up by English diplomacy in order to embar- 
rass Russia. That falsehood was circulated and perhaps 
imagined by the Russian and German embassies in the 
Turkish capital. Prince Ukhtomsky's journal ^ wrote : 
"England threw obstacles in our path in China and Japan, 
in Chitral and Armenia, and now her conduct in Eg)'pt is 
growing ever more hostile to Russia. The troubles created 
by Englishmen in the Armenian provinces of Turkey were 
planned in view of many objects, among others the establish- 
ment of direct communications over land between India 
and the Mediterranean." 

*Ukhtomsky had travelled with Nicholas II. round the globe when that 
prince was hcir-apparcnt, and the two were mistakenly supposed to be still 
on special terms of friendship. He was proprietor and editor of the 
oldest newspaper in St. Petersburg, the St. Petersburg News ( Vedo- 
mosti),o{ the staff of which I had been a member in the days when it be- 
longed to the Imperial Academy pf Sciences and was edited by Komaroff. 



236 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

It was believed, I do not know on what grounds, by well- 
informed statesmen that between the German and the 
Russian ambassadors in Constantinople something more 
than a mere harmony of views existed on the subject of 
Turkey's future. They were credited with preparing to 
play the part of fate. The former, it was asserted, had given 
the latter an assurance that if Russia were to look upon this 
coincidence of favourable circumstances as her long-desired 
opportunity to assert a claim which Germany had never 
contested, and force a free egress for her warships from the 
Black Sea to the Mediterranean, she would encounter no 
opposition from the Kaiser's government, and might even 
reckon upon its diplomatic support. That was the kernel 
of the matter: no opposition and eventual diplomatic 
support. 

In this scheme M. Nelidoff found room for patriotic duty 
and personal ambition. The despatches he sent home were 
described as insistent and suasive. He deemed the moment 
opportune, and the levers at his disposal adequate. He 
possessed the ear of Abdul Hamid, whose personal vagaries 
he had abstained from hindering or blaming and whose 
public policy he had steadily if secretly supported. In 
general outline his object was to get the Sultan to accept 
Russia's friendship, protection, guarantee of integrity, and 
to pay for these boons with two strips of territory and free 
egress from the Straits. And his method was the creation of 
an accomplished fact. It involved the seizure of the coveted 
territory on either shore of the Upper Bosphorus, and simul- 
taneously heavy pressure put upon Abdul Hamid. The 
Russian fleet would effect the landing and the Russian 
ambassador would intimidate the Shadow of God. 

To launch a thunderbolt of these dimensions among the 
pacific nations of Europe in the midst of profound peace and 
despite the most solemn treaties needed an aggregate of 
qualities and defects, intellectual and moral, which the reader 
can enumerate for himself. 

The conspirators were well aware of the way in which 
their onslaugh' against Europeanism and morality would be 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 237 

received by the opinion and sentiment of the world. But it 
was less this condemnation than the untoward consequences 
of premature disclosure that impelled them to keep the 
matter dark. Hence, not a single superfluous person was 
initiated into it. Herein one recognises the touch of the 
imperial hand. Nicholas H. was extremely secretive at the 
best of times. One never could tell what schemes he was 
turning over in his mind. He often lacked the courage to 
dismiss a minister fairly and squarely, and would continue 
to exhibit his pristine confidence in him and lead him to 
believe that he was indispensable, and then of a sudden 
would have a statement published in the official gazette 
acceding to the minister's "request to be allowed to resign 
on account of ill-health." But when he had something in 
hand which might, if discovered too soon, stir up national 
or international passion, he was as mute as a fish, and on 
occasion would adopt grotesque means of ensuring the 
maintenance of the secret, as he did in his behaviour towards 
the minister Birileff when conspiring with the Kaiser 
against his ally France at Bjorke. In the present case of the 
Nelidoff-Tshikhatshoff conspiracy the stakes were large. For 
if the Sultan should prove insensible to caresses and deaf to 
threats — as he certainly would if he got wind of the plot 
before its realisation — an armed conflict would be almost 
unavoidable, and it might be hard to confine it to Russia and 
Turkey. Besides, this new departure would entail a re- 
versal of the system adopted by the Tsardom in its dealings 
with the Fast: to influence and control without actually 
annexing or threatening. It was well understood that luig- 
land was the one power deeply interested in the strict 
preservation of the existing treaties relative to the Black Sea 
and the Straits, and it was assumed that a conflict with her 
might with Germany's help be averted. 

To what extent the Kaiser's government was commiltcd 
to the Russian ambassador I am unable to state for lack of 
evidence. My personal conviction is that if any such accord 
existed, which T strongly doubt, it had Iktu made l)etwecn 
the KaistT and the Tsar. But so far as T now know the plan 



238 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

was exclusively Russian. I vouch for the facts that the plan 
worked out by Nelidoff and Tshikhatshoff was approved by 
Nicholas II., that all the preparations for its execution were 
made, and that Witte with difficulty stifled the enterprise 
just when it was on the point of becoming an international 
revolution and an insolent challenge. 

Contemplated from the point of view of Turkey's internal 
condition the conjuncture seemed favourable enough. The 
Ottoman Empire — a real Asiatic state in all its nakedness — 
was apparently tottering, and might at any moment go to 
pieces. Insurrections and risings among the Christians, 
massacres by the Kurds and Turks, discontent and sedition 
among the Mohammedan elements of the population, 
scarcity of money, national humiliations, all impressed 
Nelidoff as infallible tokens of the approaching end. At 
Zeitoun the Armenians had risen, made a determined stand 
against the troops, and were finally induced to surrender 
by the powers, who guaranteed an amnesty and the appoint- 
ment of a Christian governor. A revolt had broken out 
among the Druses of the Hauran. In the district of Van a 
fresh outburst of religious and racial fanaticism had cul- 
minated in the violent deaths of many Turks and Armenians. 
The Christian Slavs of Macedonia had begun their guerilla 
warfare. In August, Constantinople became the scene of such 
bloodshed and cruelty as had not been witnessed there 
during the nineteenth century. For thirty hours the Moham- 
medan mob had the Armenians at their mercy and 
slaughtered about 2000 of them in the houses and streets. 
In short, Turkey was anarchy incarnate, and the powers felt 
that the least they could do would be to present a collective 
note to the Porte. This communication was drafted, de- 
livered, ignored. Another concerted but really drastic 
measure was imminent, and it seemed as though in the natural 
course of things the last grain of Turkey's sands would soon 
have run down. 

One day the Tsar learned from Nelidoff's despatches that 
his long-wished-for settlement of the Near Eastern difficul- 
ties was at last In sight and could be achieved if his ambas- 



IXTERXATIOXAL RELATIONS 239 

sador's plan of campaign were carried out immediately. 
Well pleased, he ordered Nelidoff to repair to Petersburg, 
and Admiral Tshikhatshoff, then chief of the Odessa general 
staff, to visit the Turkish capital, and on the way to take 
stock of and report upon the strength of the fortifications of 
the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and draw up a plan for 
the military descent to be effected in the near future and 
under the conditions then prevailing. Carefully though 
these ongoings were hedged round with misleading state- 
ments, they did not pass wholly unnoticed; some foreigners 
alluded to them as ominous shadows of far-ranging events. 

Nelidoff, on reaching the palace on the Singer's Bridge,^ 
went over the whole ground with Shishkin, the Dryasdust 
of the Foreign Ofifice. Shishkin informed him that the v 
Emperor desired to have the subject clearly unfolded in 
writing, with all the advantages and drawbacks of the con- 
crete scheme lucidly set forth so that the members of a very 
special council, which he would convene for the purpose, 
might have adequate data on which to rest their decision. 
The ambassador duly presented the memorandum. 

That document existed down to the outbreak of the 
present war, and probably until the Bolshevik revolution. 
It may still exist to-day. It passed through the hands of 
Witte and others. I never actually saw it myself, but accord- 
ing to the description of it which was given to me by those 
who did, the preamble was devoted to a cursory description 
of the internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, of the 
growing femient in the capital, of the anarchy in the prov- 
inces, and of the daily danger of a formidable insurrection. 
Nelidoff laid special stress on the Armenian question as an 
irritant and a dissolvent. At that moment it held Constan- 
tinople in a fever of excitement with intervals of panic. He 
had reason to apprehend that the Armenian revolutionists 
were hatching another plot which would infuriate the 
Mohammedans and cause a more fearful slaughter than 
any yet witnessed. Again, the Sultan might be deposed, 
and in this case popular riots, perhaps even mutiny among 
* The Petersburg Foreign Office. 



240 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the troops, might ensue. Abdul Hamid could not be moved 
beforehand to take action calculated to dispel these dangers 
without creating others more redoubtable. He had no moral 
influence over the nation. 

As for reforms, only a simpleton would build on them. 
The Porte could not carry them out, if it would, because 
they would rob the Turkish and Kurdish populations of 
their privileges, and as these Moslem peoples outnumber 
the Christians, they would oppose the application of the 
reforms tooth and nail. Force employed against the Moham- 
medans in order to conciliate the Christians would then 
remain the only alternative. And Abdul Hamid was too 
shrewd a statesman to commit such a blunder as to have 
recourse to force for such a purpose. M. Nelidoff averred 
that he fully believed in the seriousness of the threats uttered 
by the Armenians that they would rise in arms within a 
couple of months. In this case Europe would intervene. The 
six powers would put pressure on the Porte to have the 
reforms practically embodied in institutions. That might be 
satisfactory enough from the English point of view, but 
would it dovetail with Russia's vital interests? Nowise. Her 
security in the Black Sea and her communications with the 
Mediterranean would be forfeited for an indefinite span of 
time. And the more stable the order established by the 
powers in the Ottoman Empire, the more dismal the outlook 
of the Tsardom. Some other way out of the difficulty must 
be devised. 

As the early intervention of the powers was thus practi- 
cally certain, and fraught with danger, it behoved Russia to 
determine in what way she would protect herself against 
its consequences. Nelidoff held that it would not answer 
to allow the other states to send their warships before 
Constantinople — without taking precautionary measures in 
advance. What he had therefore to propose was that Russia 
should seize and keep a firm foothold on the shores of the 
Upper Bosphorus and wrest from the Sultan the freedom 
of the Straits. But the plans must be speedily drawn up and 
studied, and then carried out with the rapidity of a lightning 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 241 

flash. The squadron and the men requisite for the descent 
should be got together and held in readiness to start at a 
moment's notice. He himself would give the signal in the 
form of a ciphered telegram addressed to Sebastopol. Then 
the vessels w^ould cross the Black Sea, and before they 
entered the Bosphorus Nelidoff would have put the matter 
pressingly before the Sultan and asked him to allow the ships 
to pass and the men to take possession of the heights on con- 
dition that the interests of the Ottoman Empire would be 
well looked after. If he refused, he must l)e prepared for 
the consequences. At the same time the other powers would 
also receive information of what was being done, and an in- 
vitation to come to the Dardanelles if they felt so disposed. 
Should they avail themselves of this invitation, the Russian 
Mediterranean squadron would accompany them. And if 
they landed troops anywhere, the Russian commander 
would follow their example. In this way the Tsardom would 
have two irons in the fire to one of the other powers. 

The abiding consequence of all this would, in the eyes of 
the ambassador, be the permanent occupation by Russia 
of the Upper Bosphorus and the neutralisation of the 
Dardanelles, which would be thrown open to the warships 
of all nations. The suddenness of Russia's action would be 
justified by her natural apprehensions for the security of her 
subjects and her want of confidence in the good-will and 
power of the Porte. Nelidoff was very careful to reiterate 
and emphasise his belief that not one of the other powers 
would venture to offer opposition to the proposed seizure 
of territory. Consequently Russia could establish herself 
permanently on the Upper Bosphorus and create a Near 
Eastern Gibraltar there. That done she might take part with 
an easy mind in the international council that would fix the 
destiny of Turkey. That in outline was the gist of the cxposd. 

Such was the machination imagined by Nelidoff and the 
Tsar. It would be interesting to know how his recent chief, 
I^banoff-Rostoffsky, would have regarded it were he still 
living. But M. Shishkin, who had never displayed the least 
initiative, listened approvingly and tuvjk the needful measures 



242 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

to have the special council convened. This body resembled 
all such tribunals formed by the Tsar in this, that it con- 
sisted of members with whose approval he could reckon in 
advance. Whenever Nicholas II. wanted to have a pet scheme 
of his own stamped with the hall-mark of relative legality 
he submitted it to the judgment of a few officials who were 
certain to make it their own. It was thus that he had gone 
to work in dealing with the various questions that cropped 
up in connection with Korea, Manchuria, China, Japan, 
Persia, Afghanistan, and Germany. And in this case he 
conformed to the same rule. 

It was in the early days of December, 1896, that the special 
council met to talk over the scheme propounded by Nelidoff. 
Probably no such body had ever deliberated with greater 
secrecy during the reign of Nicholas II. Even the Tsar's 
alter ego, Pobiedonostseff, was kept in complete ignorance 
of what was going on. For some days four or five persons 
had the fate of the Turkish Empire, and perhaps the peace 
of Europe, in their power, and they came to a decision un- 
favourable to both For the secret council with one dissen- 
tient voice commended the brilliant idea propounded by 
the Tsar's ambassador. It also authorised him to gauge the 
situation in Constantinople and to give the signal for the 
descent on the shores of the Bosphorus as soon as the oppor- 
tune moment should arrive. The Emperor unhesitatingly 
ratified the recommendation of his loyal council, and the 
technical part of the scheme was elaborated at once. Shortly 
before returning to his post, M. Nelidoff received further 
instructions, and contact between himself and Admiral 
Tshikhatshoff was made closer and continuous, for the 
realisation of the plan was confidently expected to be' accom- 
plished by the new year. From this time forward all power 
was vested in the Russian ambassador. Whenever he gave the 
signal everything else would follow automatically, so to say. 

Time pressed. The danger to Europe was imminent. 
But of that none of the conspirators recked. What was much 
more serious was the effect of the plot on Russia herself. 
Jt would undo Witt.e's slowly elaborMed scheme of pacific 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 243 

penetration, open the door to foreign competition — diplo- 
matic, economic, and, what was far worse, military. For if 
Russia had to make good on the battle-field the influence she 
was arrogating to herself in the council chamber, she would 
quickly sink to the low level of her own specific gravity. 
Of these consequences Witte was painfully aware, and he was 
quite ready to protest as energetically as he knew how. But 
that was not enough. He had already done all that an influ- 
ential minister could effect single-handed, and it fell far 
short of what was needed. All that he could still undertake 
was to enlist the support of his personal adversary, Pobie- 
donostseff, and induce him to awaken the Emperor to a sense 
of the enormity he was about to perpetrate. Smothering his 
personal aversion as he so well knew how, Witte called on 
his implacable enemy, the Ober-Procurator of the Most 
Holy Synod, and put the matter plainly before him, appeal- 
ing to his patriotism and sense of duty to Russia and the Tsar. 
Pobiedonostseff was astounded. He had heard nothing of the 
goings on of Nelidoff, Tshikhatshoff, and Shishkin. He 
could hardly believe these officials so utterly devoid of 
political sense and so incapable of discerning the mischief 
they were about to inflict on their own country. He acknowl- 
edged, however, that in view of such a mad scheme Witte's 
fears were well founded and his unusual action justified. 
He would see the Emperor without delay and leave nothing 
undone to have the plot frustrated. 

Repairing to Tsarskoye Selo, he laid the matter before 
the Tsar who, naturally enough, conjectured that the Ober- 
Procurator of the Most Holy Synod had received his in- 
formation from Witte. And this act was mentally filed 
among the counts of the indictment against the Finance 
Minister. Pobiedonostseff's disinterestedness and patriotism 
were known to the Emperor. He was a thoroughly honest 
man, dry, pedantic, and incorruptible. His motives, there- 
fore, were al)ove suspicion. And he succeeded in setting the 
scheme and its effects upon the Tsar, the dynasty, and the 
Russian State in such a forbidding perspective that before 
he left the palace the monarch suspended the decision and 



244 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

withdrew the powers of independent action with which 
Nelidoff was invested. Thus the imminence of the danger 
was displaced owing to the timely intervention of Witte and 
Pobiedonostseff. 

But the Black Sea Squadron and the men told off to occupy 
the heights of the Upper Bosphorus were kept in readiness 
from that day onward until the outbreak of the war against 
Japan absorbed all the warships and fighting men available. 
Thus from the year 1896 to 1904 the naval and military con- 
tingents and all the accessories of the expedition remained 
in evidence awaiting an opportunity to play their part in 
realising that criminal plan. 

The Story of Kiao Chow 

Truth and loyalty were so often eschewed in these trans- 
actions that the historian who is acquainted with the subject 
takes their absence as a matter of course. At the close of 
the Chino-Japanese campaign, immediately after the treaty 
of Shimonoseki became known, another illuminating in- 
stance of unscrupulous dealing occurred in which, however, 
as the Russian saying puts it, the scythe came upon the rock, 
and Germany received a coin from her own mint, Witte 
told me that the idea of depriving Japan of the main fruits of 
her victory had sprung up in his own brain and was executed 
without opposition because, although he was only Minister 
of Finances at the time, his influence over all Russia's public 
business was still paramount.^ By the Shimonoseki treaty 
Japan obtained Chinese territory on the mainland, and this 
was destructive of Witte's scheme of peaceful penetration, 
which pre-supposed the integrity of China. Accordingly he 
requested Germany and France to join him in compelling 
the Tokio government to let go of its foothold there. Ger- 
many regarded the arrangements as a business transaction 
and was determined to charge both China and Russia a 
reasonable price for tht service rendered. When, therefore, 

' Count Lobanoflf-Rostoffsky acknowledged this to every one who had a 
right to talk to him on the subject. He said so quite plainly to the British 
ambassador at St. Petersburg, Sir Nicholas O^Conr.or. 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 245 

the Tsar's government contemplated the opening of a Russo- 
Chinese bank, which, it was anticipated, would acquire the 
control of the principal economic and financial resources of 
the Celestial Empire, Germany insisted on going halves 
with her neighbour and supplying a proportionate part of 
the capital. Negotiations were consequently opened with 
the Russian Foreign Office which gave the proposals its 
"careful and favourable consideration." But while terms 
were being solemnly discussed between Petersburg and 
Berlin and suasion was apparently making a breach in 
Russia's opposition, it was suddenly announced that the 
Russian Ministry of Finances had on its own initiative 
furnished the entire capital and was no longer open to any 
offers on the subject. That was one of the results of the 
"autonomy" of the State departments. The Foreign Office 
was not, of course, responsible for thus leaving Germany 
out in the cold; with finances Count Lamsdorff had nothing 
to do, and against an accomplished fact there was no appeal. 
That was the gist of the explanations given. But the German 
government was not to be thus cheaply fed on fiction. It 
was resolved to bide its time and have its innings before the 
match was over. And the "leasing" of Kiao Chow was the 
result. Driven from the open gate of diplomacy it sought 
and found an entrance at another door. 

Parenthetically it may not be amiss to reproduce here the 
broad lines of Witte's policy in the Far East. He and I 
talked it over many a time and I have numerous pages which 
I wrote at his dictation, "for the purpose," he said, "of vindi- 
cating me one day should that be necessary." This then is 
how he once summarised his aims : 

"What I have ever striven for is to create and preserve 
conditions favourable to the pacific development of Russia. 
That is and was my central aim. Within the fairly broad 
limits which it connotes, there would have l)ecn ample room 
for our expansion especially in the Far East. And as you 
know, I had my eyes fixed on China. But I was determined 
that, so far as it depended on me, there should be no violence, 
'lo annexation, nothing to provoke the resentment or arouse 



246 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the misgivings of the Chinese, and everything possible tol 
draw their sympathy and co-operation. Russia was to be 
their friend — their intimate and privileged friend — but that] 
is all. And owing to the place which she occupied and the! 
prestige she enjoyed among the nations, her paramount 
position in the Far East, which was obtained gradually, could 
have been upheld pacifically. But on no account did I wish 
her to risk having to face the necessity of making good in 
war the exaggerated estimate of her military strength. This 
general conclusion, but not the specific ground for it, I often 
laid before Nicholas II. 

"Well, all these plans and combinations were suddenly 
knocked on the head by the Emperor's wilfulness or shyness. 
As soon as I learned the contents of the Chino-Japanese 
Treaty of Shimonoseki, I sought him out and told him that 
we must never recognize it, unless we were prepared to face 
a war or abandon the markets of the Far East. *We cannot,' 
I went on, 'allow Japan to quit her islands and get a firm 
foothold on the mainland. If we do, we shall have wrecked 
all that has been accomplished and the still greater thing* 
that are yet to be achieved by the grandiose eflforts made by 
your revered father. I gave a promise to Li Hung Chang 
that your Majesty would not permit Japan to keep Liaotung 
even if she obtained it by treaty, and China relies upon you 
to fulfil that plighted word. I am the first to proclaim the 
necessity of redeeming all our promises to Japan and of 
making all reasonable concessions to her needs and aspira- 
tions, but we cannot brook the seizure of any part of China. 
We have to stand for the principle of China's integrity just 
as firmly as the United States stand for the Monroe doctrine. 
And what is more, we ourselves must respect China's in- 
tegrity.' The Emperor looked somewhat scared and said, 
'But don't you think that if we lay plans to have the treaty 
changed now, Japan will grow desperate and declare war?' 
'No, sire, Japan will not declare war, were it only because 
that is materially impossible. She lacks the wherewithal to-^ 
day, and laler on we can square her if she becomes restive.' 

'Thereupon the Emperor asked me how I proposed to 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 247 

set the wheels of diplomacy in motion. I told him I would 
invite Germany and France to join us and that I had no 
reason to fear a refusal on their part. Then he gave his 
assent and added his 'most cordial thanks,' which he 
reiterated with increased warmth when the crisis was over 
and the aim achieved. On each of these occasions I said to 
him, 'We must of course play quite fair in all this and respect 
the integrity which we are upholding, and resolved to uphold, 
against all who would violate it.' And the Tsar assented. 

"I then arranged the concerted move of Germany, 
France, and Russia. This made me feel quite sure of success. 
It also served as an unmistakable intimation to all the great 
powers that Russia considered the integrity of China as the 
ground work of her Far Eastern policy, and would not allow 
it to be tampered with; and it also encouraged me to think 
that by accustoming all three governments to combine for 
European or world objects, I was gradually preparing them 
for a closer and less transitory alliance in the future. This 
last consideration, however, was a dream rather than a 
'plank' in my political programme. What happened after 
that and how the Treaty of Shimonoseki was declared null 
and void you know.^ What you don't yet know is at least 
equally thrilling. 

"One fateful day, when Kaiser Wilhelm was on a visit 
here, the devil threw temptation in the way of the Tsar who 
succumbed to it as he has done more than once since then. 
Much water has flowed under the Palace Bridge since that 
episode. It was on his first visit to Russia after Nicholas* 
accession to the throne. The two potentates were driving in 
an open carriage from a review, I think at Peterhof or Tsar- 
skoye Selo — I forget which. I did not hear a word about 
what passed at the time until the consequences became 
manifest, and then it was recounted to me somewhat in this 
way.^ In the course of conversation with Nicholas the 
Kaiser suddenly broke away from the ordinary topics and 
exclaimed, *I want you to do mc a favour. You are in the 

' Japan was constrained to retrocede the Liaotung Peninsula in return 
for an indemnity of thirty million tacls. 
'The Tsar himself told the story to several of the grand dukes. 



248 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

happy position of being able to help your friends as well as 
to punish your enemies. As you know, I am badly in need of 
a port. My fleet has no place worthy of the name outside 
my Empire. And why should it be debarred? That may, 
perhaps, serve the purposes of our covert enemies, but not 
Russia's. And I know your friendly sentiment towards me 
and my dynasty. I want you now to say frankly, have you 
any objection to my leasing Kiao Chow in China?' 'What 
name did you say?' 'Kiao Chow.' *No — ^none. I see no 
objection whatever.' The Kaiser thanked his host profusely 
and the imperial pair drove to the palace. The head of the 
Foreign Department was Muravieff, the most ignorant and 
least cultured of all Russia's Foreign Ministers in the course 
of the nineteenth century. He had obtained the post solely 
because, when passing through Copenhagen, which was the 
stepping stone to the palace at the Singer's Bridge,^ he dis- 
played the faculty of making a certain class of people of 
doubtful taste laugh at his farcical jokes told with somewhat 
grotesque gestures. He had the temperament of the clown. 
Muravieff probably had never before heard of Kiao Chow ^ 
and knew no reason which would militate against its being 
leased to Germany, and like other and more gifted ministers, 
he refrained from asking those who knew. But that is of no 
importance, as you shall hear later. 

"A few hours afterwards the Emperor met the Grand 
Duke Alexei Alexandrovitch who knew a good deal about 
sea-ports and their value, and about naval matters generally. 
The Tsar said, T feel put out with the Kaiser. To-day he 
has tricked me into consenting to let him have Kiao Chow. 
Of course it is not downright annexation that he aims at. He 
is only going to lease it. All the same, it is a nasty trick.' 
*You have not given him your consent in writing?' *No, 
no. Only in words. We were in the carriage driving.' 
'But surely you can withdraw from that one-sided arrange- 
<ment all the more that it would put us into a very embarrass- 

*The Russian Foreign Office. 

'When negotiating with a British diplomatist Muravieff confounded 
Dairen (Dalny) and Port Arthur, and the result was a very unpleasant 
quarrel. Of geography the Foreign Secretary had not an inkling 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 249 

ing position.' *No, no, I have given my word and I cannot 
back out. It is most vexing.' Wilhelm then returned to 
Berlin and despatched a squadron to the Far East to obtain 
satisfaction for the murder of a couple of German mission- 
aries which had been committed there. He demanded amends 
and his warships having entered the port he refused to 
withdraw them. 

"Thereupon a council was convoked in Petersburg under 
Muravieff. After some preliminary expressions of opinion 
Muravieff, calling to mind a warning of mine against allow- 
ing any power to occupy Chinese territory, moved that Port 
Arthur should be taken by us as a set-oE against Kiao Chow. 
I at once opposed the notion vehemently. For I resented 
both the remedy and the folly that had rendered a remedy 
necessary. I said, *We should immediately adopt one of 
two courses: acquiesce in what has been done and abide by 
the consequences or else insist on Germany's withdrawal 
from Kiao Chow and take our stand on the ground of the 
integrity of China. There is no third way out of the diffi- 
culty — at least none that I can approve. I certainly cannot 
perceive the logic of seizing Port Arthur as an answer to the 
leasing of Kiao Chow. Are we not on good terms with 
China? Why spoil these relations? Have we not a treaty 
with China? Why violate it? If we take either of these 
courses we put ourselves in the wrong. But if we decide to 
advise Germany to quit or else fight her, we should have 
reason and morality on the side of our political and economic 
interests, and I feel convinced that she would give way.' 

"I think the members of the council were impressed, for 
they passed a resolution that Port Arthur should not be 
taken. I myself drew up the minutes of that sitting and, 
what is more, the resolution was approved by the Tsar. I 
breathed freely again, for T had had misgivings about his 
attitude. Now he dispelled them entirely. But a few days 
later, to our amazement our common friend Admiral Dubas- 
soff entered Port Arthur.* T was furious. This slyness and 
double dealing irritated me. I at once sought out the Tsar 

*Dubassoff himself told me the outlines of the story afterwards. Port 
Arthur was leased to Russia by a deed signed on 9th April, 18981 



250 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

and showed him that I felt very keenly what had happened, 
because I had worked so long and so hard on lines incom- 
patible with the policy on w^hich he was now launching out 
and the results of this policy were now endangered. In 
conclusion I said, *The council decided not to take Port 
Arthur and your Majesty ratified the decision of the council/ 
The Tsar replied, 'Yes, but are you aware that an English 
squadron was about to take the port and that the only 
alternatives open to us were to abandon it to the English or 
else to go back on the decision of the council and take it 
ourselves? It was not until the Minister of Foreign Affairs 
told me this that I gave my assent to his proposal. In my 
place you would have done the same.' 

"I ought to have said that from the council I went 
straight to the German Embassy. Von Tschirschky was there 
instead of Radolin. I said, 'When Kaiser Wilhelm was last 
here, he was very gracious towards me and authorised me 
to appeal to him direct if ever I wanted anything. Well, 
now I do want badly to petition him for a great favour. He 
is taking Kiao Chow. I know he wants to chastise certain 
Chinese criminals and to mete out punishment for their 
crimes. This is a most legitimate desire. I sympathise with 
him. If he were to call for the heads of a hundred or a thou- 
sand Chinamen I would not say a word. But if his Majesty 
takes a Chinese port, Russia will be constrained to do like- 
wise although nothing would be more distasteful to her. 
Will you kindly telegraph in cipher what I have just said, so 
that the Kaiser may see it at once?' Von Tschirschky 
promised. The telegram was duly sent to Von Biilow 
who laid it before the Emperor. A few days later Von 
Tschirschky called on me and said, 'His Majesty the Kaiser 
thanks you very warmly for your frank expose and wishes 
me to say that from the wording of your message he con- 
cludes with some surprise that certain important conditions 
governing this matter of Kiao Chow are unknown to you.' ^ 

* The supposition to which the late Count Hayashi gave circulation, that 
a secret agreement existed all along between Germany and Russia about 
Kiao Chow and Port Arthur, is, so far as I know, groundless. I can 
state positively that neither Witte nor Muravieff nor Lamsdorflf knew any- 
thing about it, and it runs counter to several well-established facts. 



INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 251 

"I was unspeakably angry with Muravieff and I made no 
secret of my feelings towards him. Noticing this he spon- 
taneously offered me explanations. He said, 'I should like 
you to bear in mind that this business was not inaugurated 
yesterday nor to-day. It was during the Kaiser's first visit 
here that he received the Tsar's consent to lease Kiao Chow, 
and on his return to Berlin he got the people of the Wilhelm- 
strasse to formulate the one-sided arrangement and to 
transmit it at the fitting moment to our Foreign Office. The 
whole scheme was the handiwork of the Kaiser or, if you 
like, of the two monarchs. So please don't blame me. I have 
enough to answer for without that.' I rejoined that I 
accepted the explanation which I did not know before, and 
then I insisted. That is all very well for Kiao Chow. I can 
see that you had no voice in that matter at all and are not 
therefore blameworthy. But surely, surely, you could and 
should have hindered the seizure of Port Arthur. Not to 
have vetoed that piece of folly was a grave omission for which 
I cannot but blame you. And history will be more severe 
towards you than I can ever be.' 'But, my dear Serghei 
Yulievitch,' he shouted, 'you have missed the point of what 
I have just been telling you. Please understand that the 
taking of Port Arthur was none of my doing. Let me impress 
on you the fact — you may think what you like of it, but it is 
the fact — that his Majesty had arranged everything — Kiao 
Chow and Port Arthur — long ago when he acquiesced in the 
proposals of the Kaiser. That was the fruit of Wilhelm's 
first visit to Russia. As for me, I was not of course consulted 
and knew absolutely nothing about it. The seizure of Port 
Arthur was the direct consequence of the leasing of Kiao 
Chow. And it was entirely an imperial deal. Is the matter 
clear now ?' ^ It was clear and made much else clear. I 

' It would be unfair to pass over in silence another story which is abso- 
lutely authenticated and which casts a doubt on Muravieff's plea of justi- 
fication. He met the Russian minister to Hesse at Darmstadt soon after- 
wards and boasted he had had his way about Port Arthur in spite of the 
omnipotent Witte, and he added : "Things are not, however, going as I 
hoped they would. My intention was not to fortify Port Arthur, but 
only to hoist the Russian flag over it and leave a sentry in a sentry box 



252 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

trembled for Russia's future when looking back upon her 
recent past. I could hardly realise that the young Tsar, with 
no experience, little reading, and only modest intellectual 
gifts, should have launched forth into acts of that magnitude 
almost before he had taken stock of his Empire or realised 
the duties which its governance imposed. As for Muravieff, 
one could never believe anything he said, unless it was con- 
firmed by trustworthy evidence. In this case confirmation 
was forthcoming." 

To-day we are better able to estimate the effect of that 
personal intervention in momentous affairs of State which 
was one of the most baleful and least known characteristics 
of the last Emperor's reign. As the result of a sudden mood, 
in answer to a sweetly uttered request, or by way of realising 
the wish of a near relation, he would make a sudden descent 
into the statesman's workshop and by the graceful waving 
of his hand tear the web of the deftest combinations into 
shreds. The further we penetrate into the archives of 
Russia's foreign policy, even during the enlightened period 
which extends over the last two reigns, the more irresistibly 
are we forced to admit that the root principles which pre- 
sided over the foundation of the Tsarist State and deter- 
mined its predatory character remained active and vigorous 
to the very last. We may judge Nicholas II. as severely as we 
please, but we cannot deny that however puerile or pre- 
posterous some of his methods may have been, his aims 
dovetailed with the tendencies that never ceased to accom- 
pany the political activity of the Tsardom. In the nineteenth 
century there were two predatory powers in Europe, 
Germany and Russia, and the latter was still a clumsy 
theocracy from which law as a real restraint, religion as an 
emanation of the individual conscience, education as a 
State function, and social co-operation as a means of latter- 
day progress had not disengaged themselves. 

to guard it. Nothing more." But Muravieff was one of those misers who 
grudge the truth to everybody. To a foreign diplomatist who hinted 
that he had not spoken his thought to the British government in the 
matter of Port Arthur he answered, "Perhaps not — but I gained a fine 
port for Russia thereby," 



CHAPTER XIV 
The Last Statesmen of the Tsardom 

Those who still imagine that individuals rather than the 
character of the Tsarist State were responsible for those 
predatory habits and the uniform bad faith which so long 
rendered a trustworthy covenant between Russia and any 
other government virtually impossible, would do well to 
remember that, however widely individual ministers might 
differ from each other, the system invariably over-ruled the 
best intentions and vitiated the most straightforward conduct 
of the statesman in charge. Thus Count Lamsdorff was 
known to be a loyal and veracious man, of whom it could be 
predicated that his assertions were true and his promises 
sincere. But the former were always liable to be belied and 
the latter to be violated by his master or his colleagues. And 
he could not legally resign because the theory, in the 
Tsardom, to which the practice inflexibly conformed was 
that a minister is a civil officer whose commander-in-chief 
is the Emperor and that without the Emperor's permission — 
or in other words until he is dismissed from office — he may 
not lay down his functions. 

Lamsdorff was an admirable Foreign Secretary, through 
whose hands all the important State papers and into whose 
ears all the momentous State secrets passed. He had served 
under Giers who often consulted him, and under Lobanoff- 
Rostoffsky and Shishkin. During Muravieff's tenure of 
office he held the post of assistant minister. By them all he 
was noted as a discreet, steady, hard-working, conscientious 
official, whose thorough knowledge of French and extra- 
ordinary habits of seclusion — Lamsdorff never married — 
rendered him incomparably more useful than any of his 
colleagues. On Muravieff's sudden death the Emperor 
seemed inclined to give the succession to Izvolsky, who was 
then Minister in Tokio, but had been in somewhat strained 

253 



254 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

relations with the Russian Foreign Office. It appears that 
when the famous invitation to all the governments of the 
earth to meet at the Hague was sent out by the Tsar under 
peculiar circumstances which will be unfolded in a later 
chapter, the Foreign Minister, Muravieff, wrote to his cousin 
Izvolsky, then minister in Munich, to ask him How the 
grandiose idea was received by the Bavarians. Izvolsky — 
who can, I am sure, bear out what I say — knew perfectly 
that the Hague Conference appeal was a shameful fraud 
which Muravieff and the Tsar were practising on the world, 
and he refused to humour the vulgar trickster by feigning 
to become ecstatic. He had the cruel frankness, therefore, 
to throw cold water on Muravieff's sudden fervour and to 
apprise him that in Bavaria the summons had been warmly 
acclaimed only by hysterical women, Jews, and Socialists. 
That response was resented by the vainglorious minister, 
who soon afterwards transferred his cousin from Munich 
to the Far East. M. Izvolsky, when he reached Yokohama, 
on his way to Tokio, learned that Muravieff was dead. And 
the Tsar at once turned his eyes towards Izvolsky, but did 
not wish to create an accomplished fact without first con- 
sulting Witte, who was very keen to have a colleague in the 
Foreign Office with whom he could work in harmony. 

The great statesman, whose judgment of others was often 
at fault, had a higher opinion of M. Izvolsky's personal 
independence than of his statecraft and, what at that time 
was much more to the point, he was extremely anxious that 
Lamsdorff should take over the post, because he himself 
would then, he believed, be able to exert a general directing 
influence over the entire business of the Tsardom. As a 
matter of fact Izvolsky would have served his purpose better 
than Lamsdorff, because being independent he would not 
have tolerated, as Lamsdorff did, the formation of a secret 
governing board of adventurers behind his back, who 
plunged the Empire into war. He would doubtless have 
resigned or else obliged the Tsar to dismiss Bezobrazoff and 
his confederates. Witte contrived to have devoted agents of 
his own in the Ministries of War, the Marine, Justice, Edu- 



LAST STATESMEN 255 

cation, Railways, at court, in a word he possessed a powerful 
lever for every State department. And what is much more 
characteristic of the man, he had a small fleet of his own, a 
railway of his own, an army of his own of which he was the 
commander-in-chief, and he wanted to have Manchuria as 
his own domain. He built his own city Dalny and lavished 
enormous sums on laying it out. Disposing of all these means 
of influencing the government, Witte fancied that he could 
effectively hinder war and carry out his own scheme of 
governance by speedy industrialisation, railway building, 
technical and general education, and gradual political reforms. 
This, then, was the answer which he returned to the Tsar: 

'Tf your Majesty desires a society man who is also an 
official of experience I would suggest Count Delyanoff,^ but 
if you prefer to have a diplomatist, I think you will find no 
one as well fitted for the post as Count Lamsdorff. He is an 
animated archive of State documents. His drawbacks are 
an unconquerable aversion to society and all that this 
implies, so that he will not be a dispenser of hospitaUty, but 
even that drawback has ample compensations." 

Thereupon Lamsdorff was made minister, and from that 
day onward he and Witte worked in rare harmony, the latter 
being invariably consulted on all questions involving im- 
portant international issues. Here then were the two most 
influential ministers in the Empire, at one on the Far 
Eastern problem and how to tackle it, both resolved to do 
everything in their power — Witte alone was thought to be 
all-powerful — to hinder war, and yet the insignificant, un- 
trained youth who occupied the throne frustrated their 
every effort with the utmost ease. To such a degree was 
the Tsarist State true to its nature. One difference between 
Witte and Lamsdorff consisted in the manner in which 
they conceived their functions. Lamsdorff was wont to 
say, '*I endeavour to form a sound opinion on each of 

^ A Russianised Armenian, shallow, snobbish, and time-saving. He was 

my chief when I occupied the Chair of Comparative Philology at the 

University of KharkofT. but I had known him through Kossowicz and 

Philippoff many years before, when he occupied the post of Director ol 

* the Imperial Library. 



256 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the problems that are become or becoming actual and to 
seek for a solution. I then lay my view before the Emperor 
as lucidly and also as forcibly as I know how. And there 
my duty terminates. For is the Tsar not an absolute 
monarch? How and why then should I insist? Why ought 
I to resign merely because I differ from him? It is my duty 
to stay on and render him such services as he will accept." 
Witte, on the other hand, was always insistent and often 
dogmatic. He not only advised but drew on the future for 
deterrents with which he strove to frighten the Tsar, and his 
mode of carrying on a discussion was the reverse of courtly. 
Only about one political question had the two friends 
ever differed, and that was on the subject of Port Arthur. 
When it became urgent Lamsdorff, who was only assistant 
Foreign Secretary, held the same view as his chief, Muravieff, 
and was opposed to the Minister of Finances. Subsequently 
Witte taunted him with his mistake and pointed out the 
pernicious consequences that had resulted from it, but 
Lamsdorff answered, "I grant you it was an unwise step, 
and if I had to deal with the subject in the light of what I 
now know, I would certainly take sides with you. But I 
cannot admit that it led to war with Japan. This war 
was brought about by our impolitic endeavours to grab 
Manchuria and Korea." 

But do what they might, honest, clear-sighted, and even 
genial political spirits made no deep dent on the Tsarist 
State. Witte with his ideal of peace resting upon economic 
revival, growing industries, larger markets, educational 
advance, and political training had just as little success as 
Izvolsky, who boldly started from the assumption that Russia 
was already a European community and that her policy, 
home and foreign, ought to be shaped in accordance with 
that — the nationalities being placated at home by reasonable 
concessions in the direction of autonomy, and the inter- 
national intercourse of the Tsardom regulated in an equally 
liberal sense by removing all causes of friction between 
Russia and her neighbours and by striking up understand- 
ings with the progressive nations of the world. The Tsardom 



LAST STATESMEN 257 

remained to the end what it had been from the first: a 
predatory community, and, as the schoolmen used to put it, 
its action was congruous with its nature. 

When writing and working to bring about an Anglo- 
Russian Entente, I took pains to set these facts candidly 
before the British public in a series of review articles,^ and 
among other expressions of my opinion, which events have 
since confirmed, I stated that Russia's policy "is the resultant 
of conditions of which some elude analysis, most are bound 
up with her internal structure, and all are proof against 
diplomatic reagents.'* . . } For knowing the men who 
successively presided over the Foreign Office I could not 
ascribe to them, but only to the mechanism which they kept 
going, the pertinacity of the assaults they made upon the 
foundations of the European political system and upon such 
ethical postulates as are commonly supposed to militate 
in favour of its maintenance. In the space of two years 
the Tsar's government twice deliberately hoodwinked the 
British Foreign Office by means of the illustory hope of an all- 
round settlement; the Foreign Minister, Lobanoff, availed 
himself of a period of profound peace to organise a coalition 
of the great powers against Great Britain, offering Egypt 
to France and seeking to bribe Spain with Gibraltar; the 
war minister, Kuropatkin, was once on the very point of 
taking Herat, fighting the Afghans, and challenging their 
British protectors, at another time he laid a trap to seize the 
persons of the Emperor and Dowager Empress of China; 
the acting minister, Shishkin, in obedience to an imperial 
decree, was about to seize Constantinople and cut the 
Gordian knot of the Near Eastern Question without a word 
of warning to her Majesty's government ; in January, 1904, 
war with Great Britain was in sight, and in the summer of 
the same year the littoral of the Baltic was hurriedly protected 
against British warships, and arrangements in Turkestan were 
made for an eventual campaign against India. 

Thus the aggressive attitude of the Tsardom towards the 

* Cf., for instance, the article entitled "The Obstacles to an Anglo- 
Russian Convention," Contemporary Review, June and July, 1904. 

* Contemporary Review, July, 1904, p. 41. 



258 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

European family of nations was seen to be a link in the chain 
of politico-psychic necessity forged by its founders. It was 
the resultant of a clearly defined set of conditions, not the 
creation of the brain of a far-seeing statesman. Those who 
fancied that Russia's diplomacy was uncommonly sagacious, 
planning ages ahead the moves which would be made by re- 
mote posterity, and crediting Peter the Great with what was 
really the work of happy accident or the temporary success 
of shifty ministers, mistook a popular legend for an historical 
fact. The truth is that, like most other countries, Russia 
possessed many diplomatists and very few statesmen, but, 
unlike them, she advanced along certain unchanging lines 
of action whoever might happen to be at the head of affairs. 
It was an instance of vis inertice. For her policy was traced 
by internal conditions, one of which moved her to withdraw 
her main forces, moral and material, from the heart of the 
Empire to its extremities. I gave frequent expression to this 
conviction in bygone times. "Territorial expansion," I 
wrote, "and not internal development is the law which 
still shapes her course to-day. Hence the State grows in 
extent while the well-being of the people remains stationary. 
The government therefore is very wealthy, but the people 
exceedingly poor. The State is ever annexing territory, 
while the peasants complain that they lack soil to till. The 
bulky bags of gold are lavishly spent in Korea, Manchuria, 
and the uttermost ends of the globe, while the mooshik feels 
the pinch of poverty. In a word, the pent-up energy of the 
nation runs along the line of least resistance, which is that 
of territorial expansion, and every general, admiral, ambas- 
sador, and consul knows that he may safely try to score a 
point in that direction. For if he succeed he will have 
merited well of his government, and if he fail he will be 
promptly disavowed. 

"One of the practical consequences of this state of things 
is that the Russian nation appears to the outsider as an 
agglomeration of distinct and hostile races, religions, and 
interests, which have never been blended, and are loosely 
linked together by obedience to one and the same head. 



A 



LAST STATESMEN 259 

Hence the individual lacks not indeed patriotism, but that 
particular and inspiring form of it which is engendered by 
the consciousness that the State is to some extent, however 
small, the work of his own hands. Thus the Armenian, the 
Pole, the Finn, the Hebrew, does not feel himself a Russian 
in the same sense in which his compatriot in the United 
States feels himself an American. He is an Armenian or a 
Pole first and a Russian afterwards. Even the real Russian 
does not identify himself with the State, which grows rich 
at his expense and pursues ideals after which he himself has 
no desire to strive. 

"Now to merge all these heterogeneous elements in one 
great nation, as the Americans have done, is an arduous 
task, to be successfully tackled only by means from which 
the government instinctively recoils. For such a change 
presupposes the repeal not only of such special legislation 
as at present exists for the different nationalities, Poles, 
Caucasians, Jews, Finns, etc., but also the removal of class 
privileges and disabilities, the spread of elementary, second- 
ary, and technical education, and the introduction of other 
reforms which are eschewed as incompatible with the present 
political fabric. All the surplus activity of the population, 
therefore, as well as a large part of its financial resources, is 
diverted into other channels and utilised for the benefit of 
Manchus, Koreans, and other peoples who are neither Russian 
nor Christian. The purely mechanical attempts at assimila- 
tion, such as those which are associated with the names of 
General Bobrikoff in Finland and Prince Galitzin in the 
Caucasus, have hitherto produced only negative results, 
estranging and embittering instead of conciliating and 
uniting. Thus the Finns are less Russian in sentiment to- 
day than they were a quarter of a century ago. The Arme- 
nians, who were once regarded as zealous apostles of the 
cause of the Christian Slav in Asia Minor, are deeply dis- 
trusted by official Russia at present. And every new war 
renders it more and more difficult to reduce the motley 
elements of the population to a common denominator." * 
^Contemporary Review, July, 1904, p. 45. 



260 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

How utterly unavailing were the endeavours, not always 
systematic, of Russia's genial statesman, Witte, to har- 
monise the Asiatic spirit of the old and unchanging Tsardom 
with the economic necessities and ethical tendencies of the 
new epoch, and to draw its peoples within the pale of Euro- 
pean culture, is brought home to us with irresistible force 
in the government's dealings with the Far Eastern States. 
The outward and visible sign of the interest taken by the 
Petersburg government in the destinies of those remote 
countries was the resolve to treat the project of the Trans- 
Siberian railways as vital, to build the line within a rela- 
tively short period, and take it through Manchuria. This 
was Witte's scheme, for which he soon obtained the ap- 
proval of Alexander III. The next link in the chain that 
was to connect the interests of these two aggregates of 
peoples was an understanding with China. The conversa- 
tions that led to it were conducted by the Russian statesman 
with the display of all the means that strike the imagination 
and paralyse the reasoning powers of the Asiatic. The 
history of this bargaining is an epitome of the relations, 
cultural and political, between the two. The shrewd, epi- 
grammatic, old-world sayings of the great Manchu leader, 
who was drawn to Russia by golden chains and hypnotised 
by fascinating spectres, contrasted with the bold, business- 
like language of the illustrious Russian. Although the 
Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time was the highly 
gifted causeur Lobanoff-Rostoffsky, whom I had known in 
Vienna, it was the bluff Finance Minister who carried on the 
conversations. 

In his secret dispatches from Russia to the Tsung Li 
Yamen ^ of Pekin, Li Hung Chang put the matter very 
simply before his government and sovereign. Here is one 
telegram of his which was given to me soon after it had been 
deciphered : 'T received a visit ^ from the Russian Finance 
Minister, Witte, who developed his views on the subject of 
the Manchurian railway and the route which, in his opinion, 

* The Chinese equivalent of our Foreign Office. 
'On 2ist April, 1896 (old style). 



LAST STATESMEN 261 

had better be chosen on the score of cheapness and expedi- 
ency. Once built, he said, it would lessen the danger to be 
apprehended from Japan, but China ought not to be charged 
with its construction, because it would take her fully ten 
years. I objected that if the choice of a company were left 
to Russia she would construct it herself, and that a prece- 
dent would be created for other powers to follow. He 
answered that if we dissented China would never make the 
railway, and that in any case Russia is minded to extend 
her line to Nipchu, and then await a favourable moment, 
but that she could not renew her offer to help China. This 
view is Witte's, but his ability is made much of by the Tsar. 
Lobanoff, whom I have met on two occasions, has never 
broached this subject.'* 

The next telegram is dated three days later and runs thus : 
"When an ambassador has once presented his credentials 
it is not usual for him to receive a second audience. Yet the 
Tsar has received me again in his private apartment, my 
*son, Li Chung Fang, being the only person present. The 
pretext was his Majesty's wish to take over the presents. 
And this is what he said, ^Russia owns vast territories which 
are but thinly populated. Therefore she will not trespass 
upon a foot of soil which is the property of others. More- 
over, the ties which bind her to China are very intimate. 
Hence her only motive in desiring the junction of the rail- 
ways through Manchuria is the quick conveyance of troops 
for the purpose of affording effectual help to China when- 
ever the latter country is hard set. Consequently, it is not 
for Russia's advantage alone that the line would serve. On 
the other hand, China's resources are not sufficient to 
enable her to build the railway. If she handed over the 
building concession to the RussoChinese Bank at Shanghai, 
safeguarding her right of control by means of suitable stipu- 
lations, no difficulties need be anticipated. Such things are 
done in every country.' For those reasons the Tsar re- 
quested me to weigh well the proposals, and to adopt 
practical means to realise them. He added that China could 
not he sure th<it England and Japan would not brew trouble for 



262 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

her very soon, but she could at least enable Russia to come to 
her assistance.^ In the execution of my duty, I report those 
words for the information of the crown." 

Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yanien 

"27th April, 1896 (old style). 

"Lobanoff invited me to dine with him yesterday, and 
I met Witte there. The building of the railway was put for- 
ward by both ministers as a matter of extreme moment. 
Witte maintained that it could be constructed in three years. 
I urged that there were obstacles in the way, but he answered 
that he would obviate them by putting on extra labour. 
China, he said, lacks the money to build the Manchurian 
line, and it would never be even begun if she were charged 
with the task of making it. It would therefore be better if 
the Russo-Chinese Bank undertook it. I answered that I 
would refer the matter to the crown. Respecting the Tsar's 
mention of help, Lobanoff told me that he had no instruc- 
tions from the crown, and that he would obtain them by 
the 29th inst., and resume the conversation then. He thinks 
that if China solicited the despatch of Russian troops, it is 
she (China) who should undertake to provide them with 
food. If China were in straits Russia should come to her 
assistance, and vice versa. But the cardinal point was that 
railway connection should be made through Manchuria, 
and the convention once ratified, a secret treaty might then 
be concluded. ..." 

Witte's power of suasion had been exerted to some effect 
before the next telegram was despatched. 

Li Hung Chang to the Tsung Li Yamen 

"2nd May, 1896 (old style). 

"Concerning the treaty, there is little in it to which 

objection could be taken, Russia's motive being a desire to 

establish friendly relations with China. If we refuse it, her 

dissatisfaction will be deep and our interests will suffer in 

* It ought to be superfluous to state that the italics are mine. 



LAST STATESMEN 263 

consequence. Witte was the only person who witnessed the 
private negotiations with Lobanoff. He gave me to read the 
draft of a contract with the Russo-Chinese Company, setting 
out that the capital must be Russian and Chinese only, the 
merchants of other countries being eliminated from the list 
of subscribers. China would receive an annual sum of a 
quarter of a million dollars, whether the enterprise showed 
a loss or a profit. There would also be paid to her an initial 
sum of two million dollars. The line would be handed back to 
her fifty or eighty years after it had been built." 

It is instructive to note that one of Russia's principal 
levers by which this apparently brilliant stroke of national 
policy was effected was the fear of Great Britain and Japan 
with which she successfully inspired China. Her sole object 
in making the Manchurian railway was to shield China from 
the infamous designs of the maritime powers, and her 
resolve to build it herself was inspired by the wish to get it 
done soon enough to counteract the aggressive moves of 
Japan and Great Britain, who might brew trouble very soon, 
Li Hung Chang was assured. And so anxious was Russia 
to discharge this friendly office for China that, unless she 
were permitted to do so, she threatened to join China's enemy, 
Japan ! 

I saw and possess the treaty to which these negotiations 
led up. In connection with that document an amusing 
incident cropped up which brought out Lobanoff's easy- 
going unconcern and ready resource. Witte, who had 
arranged everything with the Chinese statesman and kept 
the Tsar informed of every move, at last had all the points 
of the bargain in his head. Nicholas II. approved them, and 
said that they were to be communicated to Lobanoff- 
Rostoffsky. Witte accordingly called on his colleague and 
explained to him in his emphatic staccato manner what it 
was that he had induced Li Hung Chang to acquiesce in. 
Lobanoff listened and, having heard, at once took a pen, 
wrote for a few minutes, and then read out what was a com- 
plete and carefully-worded treaty, divided exactly into the 



264 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

requisite number of clauses. The first paragraph ran thus: 
"This treaty is to come into force whenever in Eastern 
Asia Japan violates Russian, Chinese, or Korean territory. 
It is stipulated that in this event the two contracting powers 
shall forthwith send all their sea and land forces then avail- 
able to the front, give mutual aid to each other, and likewise 
assist each other to the best of their ability in providing 
ammunition and war stores.'* On the following day Loban- 
off was received by the Tsar, and after the audience he 
telephoned from the ministry to Witte saying, "His Majesty 
fully approves the wording of the treaty. I am sending you 
a copy." Witte, who never grudged any pains when engaged 
in official work, scanned the text, and saw that the words 
"whenever . . . Japan violates" had been changed into 
"whenever . . . any power violates," etc. Witte objected 
to the change for obvious reasons, and he went to the 
Emperor and laid the case before him. Nicholas II. upheld 
the objection, and said that it must have been merely an 
oversight which he would have corrected. Just then every- 
body's attention was engrossed by preparations for the 
coronation of Nicholas II. and many things were out of 
gear. Lobanoff meeting Witte told him that the Tsar had 
apprised him of the mistake, but that he had since corrected 
it. "The fact is," he explained, "I wrote ']d.p2in' at first, 
but then I deliberately put the case more generally, but on 
reflection I find your objection adequate." The day on 
which the document was to be solemnly signed came round. 
According to custom, a treaty is never read on this last day, 
but is merely signed by the contracting parties. In this 
case Lobanoff had to put his name first. And he was on the 
point of taking his pen to do so when Witte cast his eye over 
the open treaty and to his amazement noticed that the 
wrong wording was in the new copy. He made a sign and 
apprised his colleague. Lobanoff when told of it exclaimed, 
"Is it possible? Well, I'll arrange it." He clapped his 
hands for the servant, who came in; then turning to Li 
Hung Chang, he said, "In our country it is a traditional 
custom to eat always before we sign a treaty. It is supposed 



LAST STATESMEN 265 



I 

■d bring luck to the nations concerned. With your excel- 
lency's permission we shall now proceed to honour the 
^ustom and also drink to the well-being of your great 
■buntry." Li Hung Chang bowed, and the party went into 
the dining-room and sat down to lunch. By the time the 
repast was over fresh copies of the treaty, this time properly 
drafted, were on the table awaiting the signatories.^ 

Lobanoff-Rostoffsky had a decided turn and some 
qualifications for historical research, and was one of the 
best-informed, most cultured, and least serious of Russia's 
foreign secretaries. He would sometimes conceive a grandiose 
plan which resembled a huge joke and, like a child's balloon 
brought too near the fire, would collapse on the first at- 
tempt to realise it. It was he who was in power when I went 
to Armenia disguised as a Russian general, after having 
learned from my friend the ''Russian statesman" what 
the attitude of the Tsardom was going to be towards the 
Turkish murderers of the Armenians of Sassun. My de- 
scriptions of what I had seen in Armenia caused a stir in 
England and France. Mr. Gladstone's last great speech at 
Chester, devoted to the subject, held up the Sultan to the 
contumely of the world. By that time it had become evident 
that Sir Philip Currie's optimism was ill-founded, and that 
Russia's intention was to treat the butchery as a domestic 
matter between the Shadow of God and his subjects, and to 
let the Porte have carte blanche. The British people, on 
the other hand, were for compelling Abdul Hamid to draw 
the line of despotism at the extermination of a race, and 
their view was shared by a considerable number of influen- 
tial Frenchmen — De Pressense among others — who were 
bringing pressure to bear upon their government in order 
to oblige it to take action. "Russia," who was then iden- 
tical with Lobanoff, entertained serious fears that France 
might combine with Great Britain and thwart the Mus- 
covite plans in Asia Minor. Hence the minister resolved to 
pour out the vials of his wrath upon the British as soon as 
he should have an opportunity. Nor had he long to wait. 
* This happened in Moscow. 



266 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Public opinion in France was not strong enough to force 
the hand of the government; the danger was dispelled, the 
republic sided with the autocracy, and the Sultan decimated 
the Christian Armenians with impunity. Then the Russian 
Foreign Minister, determined to strike the iron while it was 
hot, imagined a scheme for a continental coalition against 
Great Britain. He would have satisfied France with the 
hope of Egypt, Spain with the retrocession of Gibraltar, 
and Russia was to have Constantinople and the command 
of the Dardanelles. But the plan remained a pium desiderium. 
Thus, however profound the changes that might come 
over the rest of Europe, Russia's craving for aggrandisement 
was chronic and insatiable, and any man who rose up and 
undertook to gratify it, whether he was a narrow-minded 
minister, an army officer, or a simple bureaucrat, repre- 
sented the Tsardom. I commented thirteen years ago on 
the significant fact *'that Russia must pursue a policy of 
expansion in virtue of the sum total of her internal condi- 
tions, and that she is represented at a given moment by the 
man or men who are most effectually contributing to the 
realisation of that policy." ^ For some years General Kuro- 
patkin was one of these individuals, and during that period 
he forced upon his colleagues a forward policy of such an 
aggressive character that pursued by any power but Russia 
it would have soon culminated in war. It was he, for in- 
stance, who insisted on the seizure of Port Arthur against 
the advice of the majority of the ministers whom the Tsar 
had consulted, and it was his pleading which was finally 
successful. Thus the views of the other official representa- 
tives of the Empire, some of whom were men of insight and 
experience, seemed but as dust in the balance when weighed 
against the opinion of the man who was bent on helping 
his master, the ruler of one-sixth of the earth, to govern 
one-fifth. While his star was yet in the ascendant, he 
noted without alarm or misgiving the symptoms of the 
storm which the Boxers were preparing. Indeed, Catholic 
missionaries, who are well-informed, asserted that the 
^Contemporary Review, July, 1904, p. 59. 



LAST STATESMEN 267 

Muscovite authorities were well aware of the troubles 
brewing in China, and watchful subjects of the dowager 
empress of the celestial kingdom aver that Buddhist priests, 
who owed allegiance to the Tsar, went about from place 
to place fomenting the discontent and inflaming the passions 
of the people. Hence Russia being the friend might play the 
profitable role of onlooker. It was she who had warned the 
unsophisticated Chinese against the secret schemes of Great 
Britain, Japan, and the United States, and it was from her 
troops that the Manchu dynasty and the Chinese people 
would eventually expect and receive timely succour. But 
when it turned out that the Boxers were making no in- 
vidious distinctions between Muscovy and the maritime 
powers, Russia was alarmed. 

General Kuropatkin, whose notions of China and the 

Chinese were unobscured by a knowledge of confusing 

facts, elaborated a scheme of policy towards that country 

which was accepted and partly carried out by Nicholas II. 

He was wont to assure his friends that the periodic popular 

movements against foreigners there might be aptly likened 

j to troublesome symptoms in the arm of a human being 

i arising from the presence of a splinter in the brain. Remove 

1 the splinter and the jerky movements in the arm will forth- 

j with cease. Now the Manchu dynasty, he would add, is the 

I splinter, and if Russia once seizes that, the administrative 

machine will work quite smoothly, responding to the 

slightest touch of the St. Petersburg government. And the 

practical corollary which the general drew from this theory 

was that Pekin must be taken and the emperor and empress 

seized. This was the ''splinter theory" to which he won 

over the Foreign Minister, Muravieff, and the Tsar, with the 

result that Russian troops were despatched to co-operate with 

those of the other powers against Taku and Pekin. If the 

wily dowager empress and the weak-willed Bogdykhan had 

not prudently quitted the capital in time, the course of their 

lives, as well as that of Chinese history, would have run 

very differently. But when the Russian forces reached their 

destination, the "splinter" had worked its way to a distant 



268 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

part of the body politic, and was beyond the reach of the 
Muscovite surgeon. 

Baffled in her attempt to get hold of the heads of the 
Manchu dynasty, Russia reverted to her traditional poHcy 
of friendship for the Middle Empire. She withdrew her 
embassy to Tientsin, in accordance with the wishes of the 
Chinese court, urged the other powers to follow her example, 
protested her affection for China, and solemnly declared that 
she neither needed nor coveted any territory there, and by 
way of proving her disinterestedness promised to evacuate 
Manchuria. These tranquillising assurances were repeated 
after the Anglo-German agreement was concluded on the 
1 6th October, 1900. 

One of the lessons which this seemingly wavering policy 
teaches — the only lesson which concerns diplomacy at pres- 
ent — is that whatever else might change, the fundamental 
policy of Russia was immutable. 

So powerful was the Tsarist system and so well equipped 
for the gratification of its rapacious instincts that any indi- 
vidual, however insignificant or contemptible, was able, with 
its alliance, to nullify the most strenuous exertions of a genial 
statesman to transform it congruously with the requirements 
of the new age. Now of all foreign secretaries, Muravieff 
was unquestionably the most uneducated and shallow- 
brained. He could not write half a dozen sentences, French 
or Russian, without making egregious grammatical or ortho- 
graphical mistakes. He could not carry on conversation for 
ten minutes without displaying the pettiness of his mind 
and the coarseness of his wit. About international relations 
his ideas were misty and incoherent. Yet this cross between 
a ninny and a buffoon frustrated Witte's well-laid scheme of 
Far Eastern policy with the help of Kuropatkin, the Minister 
for War. 'Tn some ways," Witte told me, "Muravieff 
reminded one of the German Chancellor Von Bulow, but I 
need hardly add that cultural requirements did not con- 
stitute one of them. Indeed, it was well nigh impossible to 
talk with him on any serious topic. Not only did he lack 
breadth of view, but he lacked cultural varnish, working 



LAST STATESMEN 269 

capacity, industry, knowledge of languages, everything. His 
one qualification for the office was his apprenticeship at 
Copenhagen, but that was considered adequate, and he was 
set over Russia. It was he who marred my Far Eastern 
policy; not he alone, of course, but in league with others. 

**My intention was to take the railway through Man- 
churia to Vladivostok, and my objects were primarily 
economic, not political. That the latter would eventually 
follow from the former is obvious, but I set my face against 
annexations, wars, and other acts calculated to culminate in 
these. I give little for mere shadows. I contrived to carry 
the Emperor with me until Muravieff arrived on the scene 
and then a new constellation appeared with him. They 
induced the Tsar to take the railway south to Port Arthur 
and thus to make the trans-Siberian a manifest instrument 
of invasion. You know the sequel. Remember that within 
a twelvemonth of this impolitic decision Russian troops 
were being landed at Port Arthur,^ and MuraviefT issued his 
famous communication to the powers respecting the needs 
and the means of securing general peace and disarmament. 
I need not tell you that neither that document nor the idea it 
embodies was Muravieff's, still less, alas! had the alleged 
aim anything to do with the real purpose of the invitation 
thus solemnly sent out to the nations of the earth.*' 

The Hague Conference Mystification 

It is always instructive and sometimes unedifying to trace 
momentous and lasting reforms to their veritable sources. 
The action and its sequel linked by the causal nexus some- 
times turn out to be two ethical contraries. The revelation 
may l^e calculated to provide pabulum for the cynic and 
inspire the unbiassed with a feeling akin to contempt for the 
past. To strip such a seemingly nol)le act as the convocation 
of the world's first peace parliament of those associations of 
moral and humanitarian sentiments which had raised it to 
high rank among the achievements of the nineteenth century, 

* In the year 1897. 



270 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

savours of wanton iconoclasm. But history has to do witl 
facts, not romance, and, where the former are well estal 
lished, cannot choose but assign to them their proper place 
among the factors of progress. 

Concerning the origin of the first Hague Conference, the 
period of public deception has lasted longer than one would 
have thought possible, considering that several years ago ^ 
I did my best to disabuse the world, to reveal the prosaic 
motive underlying it, and to set forth the order of events as 
they occurred. But mankind prefers romance to reality, 
poetry to history. Mundiis vult decipi; decipiatur. Enthu- 
siastic publicists in London, Paris, and Vienna lavished 
tributes of unmeasured praise upon the Russian Tsar and 
commemorated gratefully, in passing, one or other of his 
supposed inspirers, and in particular my old friend Jean 
Bloch and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. But all 
agreed that whoever may have created and diffused the 
subtle atmosphere of enthusiasm for lofty and generous aims 
which must have pervaded the imperial court of Peterhof, it 
was the noble-minded sovereign who lived and worked in 
its centre, that focussed the forces of righteousness in the 
world, and gave them their full momentum. 

From this pleasing picture the reality was, alas, widely 
different. It reminds me of the dastardly bomb-thrower who 
when carrying an infernal machine to blow up a palace 
dropped it on the doorstep, was knocked senseless by the 
explosion, was then rescued, taken care of, healed, and 
signally rewarded because it was charitably assumed that 
he was a passer-by who having noticed the explosive laid 
down or seen it smoking had risked his life in an heroic 
attempt to throw it into the street. What happened at the 
court of Nicholas II. that Eastertide of 1898 was briefly this: 

At the beginning of the year, the Tsar, despite the pro- 
tests of his Finance Minister, Witte, had, as we saw, de- 
spatched a squadron to Port Arthur under the pretext that 
China must be protected against her enemies. In truth, 
China's spokesmen were actually and vainly beseeching the 
*In the year 1907. 



LAST STATESMEN 271 

Petersburg Foreign Office to display its friendship in some 
less aggressive shape. Russian marines were landed in Port 
Arthur, the anger of the Japanese was raised to boiling point, 
and the civilised world caught a glimpse of the hypocrisy and 
perfidy of the Tsardom. Storm clouds hung black and dense 
on the horizon. China was then the "sick man" whose 
demise, supposed to be impending, aroused the keenest 
interest and brought out the least creditable traits of national 
character. True, the British House of Commons had passed 
a resolution affirming that the independence of China was 
a postulate of vital moment to British commerce, but the one 
element that could have lent weight to such a declaration — 
readiness to fight for the principle involved — being absent, 
continental politicians merely shrugged their shoulders and 
passed on. The Tsardom had frightened and wheedled 
and bribed China into granting her a lease of Port Arthur — 
the ice-free port on the Pacific — France had followed suit 
and extorted concessions in Yunnan and along the Yangtse. 
Even Italy was itching for a coaling station, a railway com- 
pact, or some other trophy to show that she too was a factor 
in the larger concerns of the globe. Spain and the United 
States were waging a newspaper war against each other, and 
their respective governments were at their wits' end to hold 
popular passions in check. In South Africa the air was thick 
with sinister omens and Kruger's policy, spontaneous or 
constrained, was embittering the foreigners and disquieting 
the government of Great Britain. The French nation was 
riven in twain by the historic Dreyfus trial which had divided 
the people into clericals and atheists, nationalists and re- 
publicans, Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards. 

The calmest, most active, and most thriving populations 
were those of the Central Empires. But their governments 
were industriously preparing for the **Day" when it would 
rain metal. Germany, ever ahead of the world in things 
military — and not only in these — had successfully completed 
the laborious and costly process of manufacturing new and 
improved artillery and supplying it to the army. This was a 
great stride forward in the race of armaments, and it was 



272 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

also a warning to all the other competitors in the game of 
war preparations. Russia and Austria, true to their reputa- 
tions and their past, were behindhand. Neither empire had 
made any improvement in field or heavy guns. They were 
both alive to the necessity of imitating the Germans, but 
unlike the frog in the fable, that sought to blow itself out 
to the size of the bull and burst in the exertion, they hesitated 
and would fain have postponed the sacrifices involved. 

One day, Count Muravieflf, the most empty-headed of the 
Tsar's advisers, who had succeeded M. Shishkin at the 
Russian Foreign Office, called on Witte who, like a mascu- 
line Fate, was spinning the threads of Russia's existence in 
his finance department. They were a curious pair, men of 
two distinct types, one might almost say of two different 
species, the one form without substance, the other amorphous 
reality. Witte had conceived an intense feeling, more akin 
to contempt than to hatred, for the nonentity who had upset his 
Far Eastern plans and gone far to mar his general policy 
without comprehending either. Muravieff produced a docu- 
ment, waved it theatrically before his colleague, said that it 
had been drawn up by the War Minister, Kuropatkin, read 
with close attention by the Emperor, and sent on for the 
Finance Minister to peruse and report on. 

"I suppose it is a demand for more money for war 
materials?" Muravieflf smiled but said nothing. "Unless 
it is for something necessary I really cannot and will not give 
another rouble." Muravieflf muttered something about the 
necessity of breaking the eggs if you wish to make an 
omelette. Witte took the paper. He had guessed aright: 
it was a roundabout demand for a very large sum of money. 
The form in which it was put seemed to him at first but the 
sugar-coating of the pill. Witte frowned as he read the 
report: France and Germany, Kuropatkin wrote, having 
stolen a march on the other powers by providing their armies 
with the improved guns, Austria and Russia could not and 
would not lag behind. But the cost was deterrent, and 
was all the more to be dreaded that other and heavier 
expenses would have to be incurred very shortly, almost 



LAST STATESMEN 273 

simultaneously. Neither Russia nor Austria is wealthy. 
The populations of both empires are heavily enough taxed 
already. They and their respective governments v^ould 
therefore, no doubt, welcome any arrangement in virtue of 
which they could escape the taxation which the re-arming 
of the national forces would entail. But how could one 
devise an effective plan? Could not one hit upon some 
simple compromise that would commend itself to both 
governments all the more readily that the two empires belong 
so to say to opposite camps? Whether you multiply or divide 
both the divisor and the dividend by the same number, the 
quotient undergoes no change. Apply that proposition to the 
case in point. Whether Russia and Austria go to the expense 
of supplying their armies with the improved guns or leave 
their artillery as it is, the final result, if the two groups of 
powers went to war, would be the same. Why then should 
they not agree between themselves to keep the money in 
their respective treasuries? If we in Russia plunge into the 
expense, the Austrians will vie with us and neither they nor 
we shall have scored an advantage over the other, yet we 
shall both be much the poorer. The Minister of Finance, 
who is the money-provider of the Empire and has an 
interest in keeping down its expenditure, may be able to 
utilize this suggestion. 

That was the gist of Kuropatkin's message to the Emperor. 

Witte replied with some warmth that the suggestion was 
not practical and ought not to have been made. *7"st think 
it out," he said. "As an abstract proposition, Austria and 
Russia can well be imagined falling in with General Kuro- 
patkin's expedient. But put the invitation in a concrete 
shape to the official representatives of the Austrian govern- 
ment and try to picture to yourself what would follow. 
Suspicion would at once be aroused as to the real motive of 
the device. Do you fancy they would accept our explanation ? 
Nowise. They would infer either that our inipccuniosity 
bordered on insolvency, and therefore that they could not 
do Ixittcr than intensify it by obliging us to invest in the 
improved artillery, or else they would conjecture that wc 



274 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



DW-f! 



I 



were preparing to embark on some unavowed and unavow- 
able enterprise directed against them, for which funds were 
needed, and that one of our methods of raising them was by 
economising on the new ordnance. In neither case would 
they close with our offer, and in either we should have 
injured our credit abroad. These are some of the reasons 
why I cannot entertain General Kuropatkin's project 
favourably. I need hardly add that if the defences of the 
Empire really call for the outlay in question, the War 
Minister has only to say so and I, as Finance Minister, will 
find the money and eschew all dangerous expedients for 1 
getting it." " 

Witte while thus talking turned the subject over in his 
mind and contemplated it from various angles of vision, 
giving utterance to his thoughts as they arose. He was 
anxious to save as much of the public money as he could, 
but it was impossible to allow his government to approach 
the statesmen of the Ballplatz with a suggestion as puerile 
as that framed by Kuropatkin. That was self-evident. How 
then could the Tsar's wish to act upon that suggestion and 
his own desire to economise be realised? That was the 
problem, and it must be solved on the lines — considerably 
widened if needs were, but not otherwise changed — of the 
War Minister's scheme. "In other words,'* Witte ex- 
plained to me, *T knew that what was wanted was some 
ruse by means of which we could get Austria to stay her 
hand and discuss disarmament in lieu of investing in the 
improved gun. Within these limits then I had to work. I 
walked up and down the room for some time in silence, 
pondering the different aspects of the matter and giving 
utterance to my half-formed thoughts as they emerged into 
the realm of consciousness. They centred naturally and 
necessarily around my old pet idea of a league of pacific 
nations vying with each other in trade, industry, science, 
arts, inventions, and I said to myself that even if the oppor- 
tunity had not yet come to draw nearer to that, there would 
be no harm in setting the powers talking about it, And that 
started me," 



I 



LAST STATESMEN 275 

Witte's ideal, I may say in passing, was not identical 
with the League of Nations of the latter-day socialists, 
nor was his way of achieving it their way. But a never- 
fading cloud-picture in that mechanico-mystical style, 
rudimentary and defective if you will, not comprehensive 
enough for an ideal, nor thorough enough for a viable 
organism, and with all the tangled roots of the militarist 
order of things about it, but still a generous dream capable 
of drawing him onward and upward to a better political 
or social ordering than the one over which he presided, 
floated constantly in his mind. I cannot assert that it 
had much influence over his policy, indeed I know that it 
had not. He was much too shrewd a statesman, too clever 
a judge of human character, to be hastily sanguine about the 
coming of the League of Nations. He was not sufficiently 
naive to imagine that in the minds even of the foremost 
peoples of the earth consciousness of their common para- 
mount interest in a stable peace and a compact system of 
international law was sufficiently sharp to nerve them to 
the sacrifices involved in political consolidation and social 
advance. Moreover, being conversant with the potent 
elements of obstruction in his own country and in Germany, 
he was patient and not over-hopeful. 

Witte grudged every rouble he had to spend on arma- 
ments.^ He loathed the very name of war and was never 
weary of denouncing it. "It is my conviction," he wrote in 
my wife's album, "that the burden of armaments without 
limitations may become more irksome than war itself." To 
assert that the groundwork of his policy was the avoidance 
of war does not commit me to approval of his political aims, 
or of the means by which he would fain have accomplished 
them. His most vigorous exertions were made to safeguard 
peace, and the war that first marked his failure also ruined 
his career and undid his whole life-work. 

Pursuing the train of reflections started by Kuropatkin's 
memorandum, the Finance Minister reflected that if in lieu 
of saving a few million pounds on their artillery for the 
* So did his successor in the Finance Ministry, KokotTtscff. 



276 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



benefit of two needy peoples it were possible, as it would 
one day, to economise the countless sums of money that 
were being annually squandered on armaments generally, 
then the game would indeed be worth the candle. But all 
that could be done in his lifetime would be to prepare men's 
minds for the general reception of these notions, and in 
particular for the axiom that the one deadly enemy to cul- 
tural advance is militarism. Witte did not deny the fine 
side of patriotism, nor would he have done aught to weaken 
the sentiment, neither would he leave his own country in- 
adequately prepared for the war which he knew was coming. 
''But I often think," he said, turning to Muravieff, "that 
the unexampled prosperity of the United States of America 
is a direct effect of its immunity from militarism. Suppose 
each of the States there were independent as are those of 
Europe, would the revenue of North America exceed its 
expenditure as it does to-day? Would trade and industry 
flourish there as they now do? On the other hand, suppose 
Europe could contrive to disband the bulk of her land 
forces, do with a mere nominal army, and confine her de- 
fences to warships, would she not thrive in an unprecedented 
way and guide the best part of the globe? Can that ever be 
accomplished? Who knows?" 

The conversation ended thus: "Does his Majesty wish 
the money for the new weapon to be provided, or is it on 
the War Minister's plan that he lays the chief stress?" 
"He desires that General Kuropatkin's scheme should be 
discussed in council. It has taken his fancy. And he asked 
me to get your general impression in advance. I am sure he 
means to carry out the idea in some shape, and he hopes 
you will design a practical one." "Well, in that case," Witte 
remarked with a smile, "say that I approve the principle 
underlying it, but I would apply it not to Austria and 
Russia only, but to all the nations of the globe. In this way 
we should avoid invidious distinctions and leave no ground 
for misgivings. A proposal of this kind might be addressed 
to all nations, great and small; it would be welcomed by 
many. Whether the few would put off ordering the new 



be W 



LAST STATESMEN 277 

artillery is another matter. But if that be the theme to which 
I am to compose variations, you have them now. There can 
be none other." 

Muravieff then left, and Witte said no more about the 
matter until he attended the special council at which Count 
LamsdorfT as Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs appeared 
beside Count Muravieff. As soon as General Kuropatkin 
had read and explained his project, Witte criticised it 
sharply. A lively debate ensued in the course of which the 
two Ministers of Foreign Affairs endorsed Witte's view unre- 
servedly, whereupon the scheme was negatived and dropped. 

Then, to the amazement of those present, Muravieff calmly 
took out a sheet of paper and read the rough draft of a cir- 
cular to the powers on the subject of the limitation of arma- 
ments. It was Witte's proposal put in diplomatic phraseology 
by the Foreign Office. It was approved unanimously by all 
present. Witte recognised the fruit of his suggestion, and 
smiled at the humanitarian wrappings which had thus been 
vouchsafed to Kuropatkin's simple ideas, for he knew that 
the whole scheme was a piece of hypocrisy and guile. That 
rough draft — in its finished form the work of Lamsdorff — 
was ratified by the Tsar and subsequently ^ handed to all 
the foreign diplomatic representatives accredited to the court 
of St. Petersburg. Soon afterwards Witte, when making 
his usual weekly report to the Emperor, behaving like 
one of the sceptical Roman augurs, paid him a hand- 
some tribute for the warmth with which he had taken up 
the great humanitarian idea. And Nicholas 11. accepted 
the tribute as well deserved. In this first circular the object 
of the conference was described as "a possible reduction of 
the excessive armaments which weigh upon all nations." 
And the way to effect it was *M)y putting a limit to the pro- 
gressive development of the present armaments." But in 
view of the recent improvements in artillery, of the uncer- 
tain situation, and of disturbing elements which continued 
to agitate the political spheres,^ the Russian government 

" Oil the 24th August, 1898. 

"Cf. Count MuraviefTs communication to the ambassador of the French 
Republic (nth January, 1899). 



278 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



took no further steps for a while. People hoped or feared 
that the matter would not be proceeded with further. But 
after some months' reflection and groping, the programme 
was modified, and instead of calling for a reduction of 
armaments, all that was now asked for was the maintenance 
of the budgetary sums allotted for them at a level which for 
a certain term of years must not exceed that of the year 
1898-9. 

There would in all probability have been no Hague Con- 
ference if General Kuropatkin had asked in the ordinary 
way for the necessary credit to enable him to follow the 
example of his German colleague and supply the Russian 
army with the new gun. It is equally probable that if Witte 
had simply accepted or rejected the War Minister's sugges- 
tion of a "deal" with Austria, the peace conference would 
not have been convoked or thought of. With a touch of 
that irony which generally accompanied his frank talks 
about the Tsar with an intimate friend like myself, Witte, 
who was sentimental rather than cynical, remarked that the 
Tsar's peace proposal was one of the greatest mystifications 
known to history, and at the same time a beneficent stimulus. 
However high we may rate the contributory causes of the 
peace movement inaugurated by Nicholas H., history will 
retain the decisive fact that the motive of its prime author 
was to hoodwink the Austrian government and to enable 
the Tsar's War Minister to steal a march on his country's 
future enemies. 

This is not the place to pass in review the proceedings at 
the first Hague Conference, the inner history of which I 
outlined at the time. It rendered real statesmen, of whom 
there were two still living, one undeniable service: it 
enabled them to see that the abyss between the two groups 
of people into which the civilised world is divided was un- 
measured — ^perhaps immeasurable. 



1 

ed I 



CHAPTER XV 
Russia in the Far East 

No one will be surprised to learn that after these interesting 
exchanges of view on a burning topic, which were thus 
occasioned by an unavowable motive, the rulers of the 
Tsardom wended their way blithely in the same direction 
as before, bestowing their immediate attention on the Far 
East under the safe guidance of Witte. 

The Manchurian branch of the railway was begun in the 
year 1899. The Minister of Communications, Prince Khil- 
koff, was on the point of travelling from Petersburg to Paris 
via Siberia and China, and had asked the Tsar's permission 
for me to accompany him and describe my impressions. 
The imperial authorisation was hardly given, however, when 
the Boxer insurrection broke out, sections of the railway 
were destroyed by the rebels, and our plans were upset. I 
then received permission to travel over all Central Asia, at 
first in a carriage to myself, which I was allowed to have 
coupled to any trains I wished, and afterwards in a special 
train for myself, which served me as bedroom, saloon, and 
kitchen. In this way I visited most places of note in Central 
Asia, including Askhabad, Merv, Bokhara, and Samarkand. 
After the Boxer rebellion Russian troops occupied Man- 
churia. But yielding to China's solicitations, seconded 
by Witte, the Tsar consented to a treaty * recognizing 
Manchuria as an integral part of China and promising to 
withdraw his troops gradually from that province, beginning 
at Mukden, which was to be evacuated within six months, 
and completing the operation l)efore the expiry of eighteen 
months from the date on which the convention was signed. 
Why that promise was not kept, and what came of its 
breach, are matters of common knowledge. But it was not 
General Kuropatkin who contributed to hinder the evacua- 
tion of Manchuria or the settlement of the dispute with 

*8th April, 1902. 
279 



280 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Japan. On this subject his views were orthodox, for in tb 
meanwhile the scales had fallen from his eyes and he saw 
the error of his former ways. He, and the Foreign Secre- 
tary — Count Lamsdorff — and Witte did what they could to 
have the Russian troops recalled and the dispute with Japan 
satisfactorily settled, but they failed. For they had ipso facto 
ceased to represent Russia and were no longer able even to 
influence her policy. 

With the utmost difficulty Witte and his fellow-workers, 
of whom by this time Kuropatkin was one, contrived by 
January, 1903, to get some Russian troops recalled from 
the western part of Manchuria, but thereupon the evacua- 
tion of that province ceased. Moreover, Fenhwan and other 
points were seized. The Japanese were alarmed, for by this 
time it had leaked out that the source from which this policy 
of aggression emanated was an obscure group of irrespon- 
sible friends of the Tsar, including Bezobrazoff, Abaza, and 
later on Admiral Alexeyeff. These men had obtained a 
lumber concession on the Yalu in which certain of the grand 
dukes and at last, it is alleged, the Tsar himself took shares, 
and this was to be used for the twofold purpose of private 
enrichment and territorial aggrandisement. Hence Japan's 
claims were to be denied brazenly and unflinchingly, for it 
was taken for granted that, come what might, she would not 
attempt to enforce them by an appeal to arms. That axiom 
lay at the very root of the Tsar's policy. 

For many years Nippon had been eager for an all-round 
understanding with Muscovy. But her efforts, which were 
sincere and strenuous, proved fruitless. It is a well-known 
fact, publicly admitted by fair-minded Russian politicians, 
that the government of Tokio had left nothing undone to 
merit the friendship of Muscovy. The advisers of the 
Emperor of Japan desired an agreement; the press warmly 
advocated it; the people would have enthusiastically wel- 
comed it. But Russia, carrying out a policy of aggrandise- 
ment, which was forced upon her by the internal condition 
of things, repelled Japan's advances. Thus she insisted on 
reserving the markets of the Far East for her industry. 



THE FAR EAST 281 

ivhich could not yet be said to exist. Again, she spent large 
sums, which might have helped her own needy peasants of 
the centre, in order to found a needless school for young 
Japanese at Khakodate; she despatched naval officers to 
instruct and train the Mikado's subjects in naval matters, 
and incurred other expenses in order to prepare the way for 
acquiring markets. And yet while the treaty ports of Japan 
were filled with the trading vessels of the principal maritime 
powers, Russia's commercial flag was absent. 

At this conjuncture the Tsar's blinding antipathy to Witte 
became intense, owing to his determination personally to 
conduct Russia's Far Eastern business free from the irk- 
some expostulations of that importunate statesman. And in 
this resolve he was encouraged by the three greedy parasites 
who formed a secret government of their own on which he 
conferred power without responsibility. Witte endeavoured 
to have these anonymous instruments of the Emperor 
dragged from their obscurity and obliged to accept re- 
sponsible posts which corresponded to the nature and degree 
of their activity. But the Tsar refused to give him satis- 
faction, and the course of the Russo-Japanese negotiations 
and of the international crisis in which it issued became 
entirely independent of the words and acts of the legally 
constituted government of the Tsar. 

That was not the only historic occasion on which 
Nicholas II. intrigued deliberately against his own official 
government. And yet he would not allow the responsible 
ministers, whom he thus degraded to the level of lay-figures, 
to retire with dignity into private life. Witte often answered 
my question why he did not tender his resignation by urging 
that the theory of autocratic government excluded any such 
wilful act on the part of a public servant of the State so long 
as he possessed the confidence of the Tsar. Whether his 
impressibility to this motive was as strong as he intimated 
may well ]yc doubted. When he was ousted from the post of 
Finance Minister on account of his opposition to the policy 
that entailed the Japanese war, his friend. Count LamsdorlT, 
relied on the same plea and remained. His colleague and 



282 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

friend, Prince Obolensky, urged him to tender his resigna- 
tion and accompany Witte into private life. "If you stay 
on," he argued, ''you will gain little or nothing, for you too 
have steadily discountenanced the Emperor's policy and he 
will rid himself of you after the war that is coming." But 
Lamsdorff answered, ''Don't worry about me. The course 
I am taking will, one day, be justified by the documents I 
possess. You will then see that I am right in staying on." 
"Where are they?" asked Obolensky. "They are all 
stored away in my house in apple-pie order. But they will 
not be published during my lifetime." 

After the war Lamsdorff was brusquely thrust aside 
by the Tsar and Izvolsky promoted from the Legation at 
Copenhagen to take his place. This ungenerous treatment 
practically killed the Foreign Secretary, who soon afterwards 
left for San Remo and survived the blow for only a brief 
spell. And the justificative documents, where are they? 
Nicholas IL had a paralysing fear of tell-tale State papers, 
and having learned that his late Secretary for Foreign Affairs 
possessed archives full of them, despatched Prince Dol- 
goruky and M. Savinsky to take possession of them, examine 
them, and send in a report on their nature. . . . And they 
have never since been heard of. 

But to return to the Manchu-Korean difficulties. Japan, 
now seriously alarmed at the signs and portents noticeable 
in Russia, was leaving no stone unturned to discover whither 
her policy tended and how to ward off the conflict that was 
heaving in sight. And the perplexity of the statesmen of 
Tokio was all the greater that they at first took it for granted 
that reasons of State and solid motives of national utility 
would alone account for the strange oscillations of the im- 
perial government. In vain Witte besought the Tsar to stay 
his hand, let the Yalu lumber concessions go, and arrange a 
modus Vivendi with Japan. In vain Kuropatkin, committing 
his views to paper, stated that the provisional occupation 
of Manchuria would become definitive, Japan's misgivings 
would be confirmed, the armaments of both empires would 
be increased, and the only possible outcome would be realised, 



THE FAR EAST 283 

and all for the sake of a few "districts in Korea which have 
no serious importance for Russia." ^ In one of his memorials 
Kuropatkin wrote frankly: "The success or failure of a few 
enterprises in Manchuria and Korea, timber, coal, and other 
concerns, is much too unimportant for Russia to risk a war 
for the sake of them," and he went the length of putting the 
question whether it would not be the height of wisdom to 
return Kwantung, Port Arthur, and Dalny to China, in order 
to keep clear of war. The general's conversion was thorough. 

But the political freebooters had an easy task to defeat 
the Tsar*s ministers and to have treaties and promises rated 
on a level with waste paper, for they now had the support of 
the minister Plehve, the rising star of the Tsardom. Abaza 
in one of his telegrams ^ tells Bezobrazoff of a talk he had 
with the Tsar, and concludes: "In the course of the con- 
versation the Emperor emphatically expressed his most 
absolute confidence in you." That was the pith of the matter. 
The crisis was of the monarch's own making, and the pair 
of intriguers, to whom Alexeyeff was afterwards added, in 
their quest of pelf plunged the country into a war which cost 
hundreds of thousands of human lives and led to the collapse 
of the Tsardom before provision could be made for the 
organism that was to succeed it. 

In one respect, however, my opinion runs counter to that 
of some Russian publicists who hotly maintained that 
Nicholas II., in company with the three money grabbers 
who carried out his behests, "unflinchingly and con- 
sciously led Russia into the war" while hypocritically 
asserting his resolve to make his reign an era of peace. *^ 
I am convinced that the Tsar deemed himself to be what 
his foreign friends had proclaimed him, "the mainstay of 
the world's peace," and that so long as he was averse to 
war no other power would dare to risk it. Few men of his 
temperament who had been continually assured, as he had, 

'General Kuropatkin's memoirs about the Russo-Japanese war (in 
Russian), pp. 151, 152. Cf. Burtzcff, The Tsar and Foreign Policy (in 
Russian), pp. 13, 14. 

* In July, 1903. A whole series of telegrams that passed between these 
plunder-seekers was cullcctcd, and I received a copy which I still possess. 
In some of these despatches the Tsar is alluded to as the "proprietor." 

•Vladimir Burtzcff is one of these publicists. 



284 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that he was the Vicar of God and the recipient of special 
divine grace would have thought or felt much differently. 
His tearful emotion when the conflict broke out and con- 
fronted him with disaster bears out this theory. At the same 
time, I know for a fact that the Russian minister at Tokio ^ 
was sending despatches of an alarming tenor, foreboding 
war and announcing that the only way of hindering it would 
be a complete change of policy. These prophecies at length 
became unbearable to the Emperor who one day penned his 
condemnation of them on one of the envoy's reports, and 
Baron Rosen was thereafter constrained to be chary of evil 
prognostications. 

The Tsar's optimism permeated his private conversations, 
his public utterances, and the secret instructions which he 
had sent to his agents. His views, for instance, as to the most 
suitable tactics to be observed when dealing with the 
Japanese were telegraphed by his favourite, Abaza, to the 
Viceroy Alexeyeff. They have a sub-Machiavellian savour 
that harmonises entirely with the peculiar sort of worldly 
wisdom which characterised him throughout his reign. This 
is the first maxim, "Russia stands to gain enormously by 
every year of peace. Therefore, every effort must be 
directed to warding off war, not, however, by concessions 
which would surely precipitate hostilities." The second 
runs, "This end may most surely be attained by a firm 
policy, polite in form and not vexatious in secondary 
matters." 

A few years before that I had learned that Baron Rosen's 
predecessor ^ at Tokio had written to his chief ^ proposing 
that Russia should give Korea to the Japanese, who would 
in return allow her a free hand in Manchuria. And the 
Russian representative argued impressively in favour of this 
transaction which would bestow an ample field on the 
colonising faculties of both. The answer of the Foreign 
Oflice was characteristic — characteristic of the man at its 

* Baron Rosen, afterwards Russian ambassador at Washington during 
the peace negotiations with Japan. « 

'M. Izvolsky. * Count Muravieff. 



THE FAR EAST 285 

head, of the Tsar whom he served, and of the Asiatic ^ State 
which absorbed their activities. ''Korea," he said, "must 
become to Russia what Bokhara actually is." The minister, 
Muravieff, can hardly have realised that geographically 
Bokhara is in Russia and is bounded on one side by little 
Afghanistan, whereas Korea was outside the Tsar's 
dominions and within easy reach of the growing arm of 
Japan. 

An amazing incident connected with the Emperor's 
tactics, as it was the proximate cause of the war and diffuses 
adequate light on this chapter of Russian history, may fitly 
find a place here. I wrote it down to Witte's dictation. 
"Since I had been ousted out of the Finance Ministry I 
continued to impress upon the remaining ministers the 
views that had led to my dismissal. I exerted myself thus for 
the sake of the country. And my exertions were successful. 
One day ^ the Tsar convoked a special council consisting of 
the Ministers of War, the Marine, and Foreign Affairs, under 
the chairmanship of the Grand Duke Alexis. The object of 
the meeting was praiseworthy: how to steer clear of a con- 
flict with Japan. The means proposed was an accord. Russia 
had already suggested an arrangement which the Japanese 
declined because it would have established a neutral zone 
bounded by the thirtieth parallel. And now the question was 
whether or no Japan's wishes should be respected and the 
obnoxious clause expunged. As peace and war hung upon 
the issue, the council resolved prudently and almost unani- 
mously to strike out the paragraph and draft a modified 
convention. There was only one dissentient voice — that of 
Abaza. This schemer, solicitous only about his commercial 
concern, suggested that the clause be retained, but the 
boundary altered from the thirtieth parallel to the Yalu 
Tsian watershed. As it was highly improbable that the 
Tokio Foreign Office would acquiesce in this, and as, if it 

'Throughout this book I employ the word Asiatic in the sense in which 
it is applied to Turkey or Persia, not in the sense in which Japan, who 
unites the higher qualities of the European and the Mongol, is an Asiatic 
State. 

•On the 28th January, 1904. 



286 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

did not, the danger of war would be imminent, the council 
negatived Abaza's motion. 

"But that intriguer was not to be baffled thus easily. He 
secretly saw the Tsar and adroitly led him to believe, with- 
out actually asserting, that the grand duke and the other 
members of the council were of his way of thinking about 
the contentious provision. That done he requested and 
obtained permission to telegraph his draft proposal to the 
viceroy for his guidance. And in his telegram he charac- 
terised that proposal as the decision come to by the Emperor 
himself. That was a scandalous — an unpatriotic — act; for 
the Viceroy Alexeyeff was sure to behave towards the Japs in 
accordance with this alleged ordinance of the Emperor. And 
lest this consequence should make itself felt too late, Abaza 
sought out the Japanese Minister, Baron Kurino, and had 
the hardihood to apprise him of the decision! This naval 
officer, Abaza, behind the back of the Foreign Secretary, 
called on Japan's representative and gave him a message 
which — excuse me for the expression — was the diplomatic 
equivalent to a vicious kick ... the direct consequence of 
which must, under the circumstances, be war." 

"Permit me to ask you a question," I interrupted. "How 
could Abaza insinuate to the Emperor that his proposal was 
approved by the council ? Were there no minutes of the pro- 
ceedings, and how and why were they kept from the Tsar?" 
"There were minutes of the sitting, but they had to be 
written with great care and verified, and as the work went 
on very slowly it was not until three whole days had elapsed 
that they were ready and actually laid before the Emperor. 
And then the mischief was done. For before that Baron 
Kurino, who knew full well that the policy of Russia was 
being shaped without the effective participation of the 
Foreign Minister, and who was now informed by the spokes- 
man and chief of the secret gang presided over by the 
Emperor, that Japan's reasonable suggestions had been 
spurned, drew the practical consequences from that alleged 
decision. So, too, did his government. Thus it was this 
untruth, minted by Abaza and passed off on the Mikado's 



THE FAR EAST 287 

government, that caused the war. Before the Tsar had read 
the minutes of the council and charged his regular minister 
with drafting a note in accordance with their conciliatory 
resolution, Japan had recalled her envoy, broken off diplo- 
matic relations with Russia, and attacked and damaged the 
Tsar's fleet. 

"As you see, Bismarck's 'doctoring' of the Ems tele- 
gram is having vogue as a precedent. It will probably be 
followed again. When hostilities opened our press accused 
the Japanese of having begun the war without waiting for the 
official answer to their demand which was in preparation 
and would, if received, have acted as a sedative. The 
allegation is formally true, but you can see for yourself what 
it amounts to when analysed." 

Another instance of how Nicholas II. interpreted his role 
and behaved to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamsdorff, 
is worth recording. He had a secret telegram sent to the 
Viceroy Alexeyeff of which Lamsdorff never knew anything 
until long after the war had begun. It was an important 
message agreeing that the Japanese should enter into full 
possession of Korea as far as the boundaries of the Russian 
concessions on the Tuman-Ula on the north and of the 
Yalu on the west, and ordering this decision to be com- 
municated to the Russian ministers in Tokio, Seoul and 
Pekin. It never was communicated to any of them. Had it 
gone through the Foreign Secretary's hands it would have 
been brought to the cognisance of the three interested 
governments and might have made a good impression. What 
Alexeyeff did with it is unknown, but it is certain that he did 
not present it. 

Witte was so incensed against the gang that was answer- 
able for the war that he could with difficulty curb his tongue 
when talking about them. "To think," he said, "that all 
the work I have done for the past twelve years is now being 
undone by a few contemptible pettifoggers who would be 
nothing without the reflection of the crown ! It is madden- 
ing. And when I think of what will happen when the war is 
over and the troops come home — well, 1 cannot tell you how 
profound and poignant the impression is — I feel sorry for 



288 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the Emperor then. We shall be spectators of a tremendous 
world-tragedy." 

The Japanese were accused of hitting below the belt when 
they fell foul of the Russian squadron unexpectedly, and the 
charge is still believed by many. I feel bound to state that 
having followed the ups and downs of the crisis as closely 
as my sources of information would permit, I formed the 
conviction that from beginning to end in war, as in peace, 
the Mikado's government displayed chivalrous loyalty and 
moderation. The notion that the Russians would have be- 
haved differently from their enemies in dealing the first blow 
so unexpectedly is, I fear, erroneous. There is extant a tele- 
gram from the Tsar to his viceroy containing this significant 
injunction: "If on the west of Korea the (Japanese) fleet 
should sail northwards past the 38th parallel, it is open to 
you to attack them without waiting for the first shot from 
their side. I rely on you. May God aid you." ^ 

It is needless to recount here the well-known vicissitudes 
of the Manchurian campaign. The landmarks of the story 
are familiar. Among its most disquieting features to my 
thinking was the scope it offered to Russian and Finnish 
revolutionists to spread their subversive doctrines and perfect 
their plans of violence. It also united all classes and nationali- 
ties in the country, not only against the policy of the State, 
but also against the regime. With the exception of a few 
members of the Bezobrazoff-Abaza band nobody wanted the 
war, and few could account intelligently for the government's 
having stumbled into it. One of the least edifying sights that 
passed before my eyes was the joy manifested by senators, 
professors, students, and other "intellectuals" whenever 
tidings were received of a Russian defeat. Many of them 
used to rub their hands with glee. Their own countrymen, 
their friends, and perhaps their relatives were exposed to 
death on the remote millet fields of Manchuria, but they 
had consolations: the circumstances that the army which 
owed allegiance to the Tsar was being decimated by the 
enemy, that the test which every regime has to undergo 
when waging war was rackinc^ and humiliating the govern- 
*The telegram is dated 8th February. 



THE FAR EAST 289 

ment, and that it was at last made patent to all that the 
position occupied by the Tsardom among the powers was 
usurped and out of all proportion to its internal resources 
and military strength — were balm to the wounds of the 
sorely tried subjects of Nicholas II. In this queer behaviour 
nobody discerned moral incoherence or a culpable lack of 
patriotism. Even the ^'moralists" acknowledged that a 
military defeat would have its political compensations. And 
yet the degree to which the moral tone of the country was 
lowered by these exhibitions was considerably less than the 
foreigner may imagine who was not acquainted with its 
condition before the war. 

The campaign brought no respite to those public men 
whose plans in peace time had been countered or warped 
by the direct and mischievous meddling of Nicholas II. He 
would have his finger in every pie, military and civil. The 
mere belief that the Emperor took a personal interest in some 
particular scheme was enough to render all other projects 
abortive, and when he stepped forward with a definite 
proposal of which only specialists could appreciate the value, 
he was sure to find most of these arrayed in its favour. To 
this rule the plan of campaign against the Japanese was no 
exception. General Kuropatkin's place in military history is 
fixed by this time, and, whether high or low, will not be 
greatly changed by anything new that may be disclosed in 
these pages. It may not be amiss, therefore, to set down a 
most interesting and characteristic account which Witte gave 
me of a conversation he had with that general soon after the 
Emperor had appointed him to be the commander-in-chief 
of the land forces.^ 

"Kuropatkin came to take leave of me a few days before 
setting out for the Far East. He seemed painfully conscious 
of the arduous nature of the task he was set to achieve. His 
former buoyancy and self-reliance had given way to an over- 
powering sense of responsibility. From an optimist he had 

* 1 induced Count Witte to narrate it a few years later to one of our 
own most distinguished generals who was writing on the subject. I tell 
the story from memory because the account dictated to me by the states- 
man is among those documents of mine which arc no longer accessible 
for the moment. 



290 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

become a pessimist. He overrated, as it seemed to me then, 
the military and other qualities of the Japanese, and as I 
listened to his praise of them I recalled to mind the days 
when he had been the soul of that policy which brought us 
to this pass. After the usual small talk Kuropatkin looked 
at me earnestly and said, 'Serghei Yulievitch, do me a 
favour. Give me your advice, frankly and fully as a friend. 
Heaven only knows what awaits me. Your vision and knowl- 
edge give weight to your counsel. Let me hear it.' *If I 
were a soldier I would with pleasure lay before you my idea 
of what your plan of campaign should be, but what can I, 
an ex-minister, urge upon you, our most eminent general, on 
a subject that lies so far from my ken?' Well, then, let me 
put a plain question to you. If you were in my place, is 
there anything that you would do, any line of action — I don't 
mean strategical but general — that you would strike out?' 
I thought for a moment and then I said, *Yes, there is. 
And as you have asked me for advice, here it is. As soon as 
you get out to the Far East, make straight for the Viceroy 
Alexeyeff. Get him into your power. Order your men to 
arrest him. Treat him otherwise with all the distinction due 
to his position, but send him back to Petersburg. That done 
you can . . .' But Kuropatkin would not let me finish. 
'Dear Serghei Yulievitch,' he said, T asked you to give me 
a piece of serious advice if you would, but you are now 
joking on a subject that is serious to the point of tragedy.' 
'Exactly,' I retorted, 'it is tragical, and that's why I am giving 
you advice which, whether you take it or not, will one day 
appear to you most serious and capable of helping you. 
Listen. If I were in 3^our place I would arrest Alexeyeff and 
send him home. Then I would frame an explanation that 
could not be thrust aside, and telegraph it to the palace. I 
mean what I say. I would act in this way for the sake of the 
country, in the interests of the Emperor himself and of my 
own reputation. For Alexeyefif is only a courtier who will 
think nothing of marring your plans in order to further 
those of the Tsar or his own.' Kuropatkin only shrugged his 
shoulders and spoke of pth^r things. Soon afterwards he kft. 



THE FAR EAST 291 

"In that answer of mine I had pointed to the key of the 
situation. Kuropatkin's plan was to let Port Arthur defend 
itself as best it could, to concentrate a formidable army at 
Kharbin, and to wait for the enemy there. Those were the 
tactics of Kutuzoff in the Napoleonic war. The Japanese 
would then have to advance into the interior, far from their 
base, or dispense with a decision and ruin themselves finan- 
cially, economically, and in the end politically as well. But 
when he reached the Far East, Alexeyeff, who was his 
superior, first advised and then constrained him to alter his 
sound plan in order to carry out the Tsar's heart-felt desire 
to save Port Arthur. At first Kuropatkin argued, but finally 
he gave way, and failed in consequence either to succour 
Port Arthur or to realise his plan of campaign." 

Witte bore these things in mind at a later date when the 
Emperor's orders to him — then Russia's plenipotentiary at 
Portsmouth — if carried out would have hindered the con- 
clusion of peace with Japan. Therefore he discreetly ignored 
them. 

The Japanese, who during this campaign and the crisis that 
preceded it gave unmistakable proofs of striking qualities 
which bid fair to make them one of the main factors in 
the future ordering of the world, bent their efforts to revolu- 
tionising the Russian working men, the intelligentsia, and 
above all else the army. The design was ingenious, but the 
technical work of executing it was uncommonly difficult 
owing to the ease with which a Japanese organiser of strikes, 
demonstrations, or riots could be spotted among white men 
and executed. As a matter of fact, a Japanese would not 
have been tolerated in any Russian city or town during the 
campaign. But through the medium of a number of Finns 
and Russians, the problem was tackled satisfactorily and 
large sums of money spent on revolutionary propaganda, 
which assumed amazing shapes, and in the purchase of 
arms, of which great quantities were smuggled into the 
country. 

In the proncness of the population to revolt lay the 
Achilles' tendon of the Tsardom, as the Japanese and the 



292 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Germans were aware, and despite the little that one heard 
of the results of Japanese enterprise in this direction, the 
smouldering hate entertained by the nationalities and the 
intelligentsia against the Tsarist State was kept steadily 
aglow, and from time to time fanned into flames. The 
Russian prisoners were well supplied with Hterature of a 
kind which their native censors would not have tolerated, 
so too were the soldiers at the front, and by the time they 
returned home many of them held views wholly incom- 
patible with the kind of allegiance expected of them by the 
bureaucracy and the Church.^ 

The strikes, the demonstrations, the subterranean agita- 
tion, the spread of revolutionary leaflets, and the brisk, 
illegal traffic between Finland and Russia, were in varying 
degrees evidences of Japanese propaganda. In Finland, too, 
it was eminently successful. The enthusiastic patriotism 
of Poland would also have been fanned into a consuming 
flame had it not been for the clear vision, ready resource, 
and enterprise of Poland's most practical statesman, who, in 
the best interests of his countrymen, promptly adopted effi- 
cacious measures to arrest the movement. Thus despite the 
difficulties with which the Japanese had to cope, they con- 
tributed perceptibly to the causes that disorganised the 
Russian army, cut some of the withes that bound the non- 
Russian nationalities together, and rendered the conclusion 
of peace a necessity for the dynasty and perhaps for the 

* The Germans have recently had recourse to exactly the same tactics, on 
a more grandiose scale, under more auspicious circumstances and with far- 
resonant effects. On the 2nd November, 1914, the Imperial German Bank 
issued a circular letter to corresponding banks in Stockholm undertaking 
to supply the Russian Bolsheviks Zinovieff and Lunatcharski with money 
for their agitation and propaganda "only on the express condition that 
this agitation and this propaganda directed by MM. Zinovieff and Lunat- 
charski shall reach the armies of the front." Another circular dated 
23rd February, 1915, from the Director of the Press in the Ministry of 
Foreign Affairs to all ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, etc., in 
neutral countries announces the formation of offices for propaganda in the 
belligerent countries of the Entente "for the purpose of creating social 
movements accompanied by strikes, revolutionary outbursts, separatist 
movements, and civil war, as well as agitation in favour of disarma- 
ment and the cessation of this sanguinary war." 



THE FAR EAST 293 

State. This necessity was clearly perceived and insistently 
relied upon by Witte in his representations to the Emperor, 
while the more cautious and tactful Finance Minister, 
Kokofftseff, in his confidential reply to the question whether 
the war should be persisted in or peace negotiations begun, ^ 
alleged the condition of things at the front, "and more 
particularly in the interior of the country,*' as grounds for 
putting an immediate end to the conflict. 

The War Office and the Foreign Office in Tokio took up 
this work of propaganda, but disagreed on some important 
matters of detail. And, curiously enough, on the questions 
which divided these departments the War Office was right. ^ 

From time to time Russian voices were uplifted against 
the continuation of the war. Petitions were sent to the 
government asking that peace be concluded. The zemstvos, 
which, working assiduously for the well-being of the troops, 
were thus rendering noteworthy services to the country, 
felt and said that similar services might be expected of them 
in peace time if they were permitted to co-operate. But the 
authorities refused to follow them into this perilous region. 
At last the minister Plehve had to forbid under severe penal- 
ties the discussion of peace at any assemblies, but the Tsar 
as an offset was forced to promise a consultative chamber 
and certain other concessions. In spite of pains and penal- 
ties, however, peace was ardently desired and frequently 
discussed. Sedition was rampant in the country. Japan's 
propaganda through Finnish agents made rapid headway. 
Now and again a man of courage would point out the danger 
to a minister or a grand duke. It is fair to Witte's memory 
to affirm that few men were endowed with as much moral 
courage as he. He feared nobody, and thought nothing of 
the consequences to himself. Here is a letter which he read 

*On 20th June and ist July, 1905- 

Mt turned upon one of the non-Russian nationalities which was being- 
incited to rebel. The wished- for consummation could perhaps have been 
achieved without much effort, but the question was put : — Would it prove 
a real advantage to Japan or the reverse? The War Office held that it 
would impair in lieu of furthering the interests of Nippon. And it was 
proved to be right. 



294 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

to me before sending it to the Tsar. It will strike many by 
its extreme simplicity and bluntness as well as by certain 
other qualities. 

"28th February, 1905. 

"Your Imperial Majesty, — From the present condi- 
tion of affairs the only rational way out is to open negotia- 
tions on the subject of peace terms and to calm Russia, at 
least to some slight extent, by working out with the utmost 
promptitude to the broadest possible issue the mission 
given by imperial rescript to A. T. Bulyghin.^ To go on 
with the war is more than dangerous: further sacrifices the 
country in its present temper will not brook without appal- 
ling catastrophes. In order to continue the campaign 
enormous sums of money are needed, and also the enlist- 
ment of a large number of men. But further expenditure 
will entirely upset the financial and economic conditions of 
the Empire, and these conditions constitute, so to say, the 
central life-nerve of latter-day States. The poverty of the 
population will be intensified, and together with it the 
embitterment and befogging of their souls will be aggra- 
vated. ... A new mobilisation on a large scale can be 
effected only by the application of force. In this way the 
warriors for the Far East will inaugurate their warlike career 
on the very place of their recruitment. If in addition the 
harvest should fall below the average and cholera reappear, 
agrarian troubles may develop in the country. Generally 
speaking, under the conditions now prevailing, the troops 
are needed in Russia itself. 

'True, it is terribly painful to open peace negotiations, 
and it will be necessary to hedge them round with condi- 
tions capable of safeguarding the prestige of imperial power. 
But it is better to do that now than to wait until the future 
becomes more menacing. Kuropatkin will not be able to 
hold his ground at Telin. With the loss of Kharbin the 
Ussuri territory will be cut off. Roshdjestvensky cannot 

'Bulyghin was a minister whose only title to fame reposes on his 
association with the first reform promised during the Manchurian cam- 
paign. The Tsar charged him with the creation of a representative assem- 
bly to have a consultative voice in legislation. 



THE FAR EAST 295 

score success. At the same time Russia has still sufficient 
prestige left to warrant the hope that the peace conditions 
will not be very irksome. But if we refuse to humble our 
spirits congruously with our religious faith now after all 
that we have undergone, and to repent before the Most 
High, we shall put ourselves into a much more hopeless 
plight. Even though the peace terms were utterly inaccept- 
able, it would still behove us to enter into negotiations. If 
they still remained inacceptable in spite of the friendly co- 
operation of certain great powers, it is unquestionable that 
in this case the entire nation would arise in defence of the 
Tsar and its own honour. Then we shall have purified 
ourselves. 

"All-gracious Sovereign! In all things decision is 
requisite. But if decision is indispensable in happiness, it is 
doubly necessary in disaster. In disaster, resolution is the 
first step towards safety. There should be no delay. Peace 
pourparlers should at once be begun, and also at once your 
charge to A. T. Bulyghin ought to be carried out, and in a 
very generous spirit. Your imperial Majesty ! I am of sound 
mind and keenly conscious. This submission is not the 
letter of a distraught man, but of one who discerns the 
situation. It is not illness that moves my hand, but resolve, 
resolve to tell you what others are perhaps afraid to tell 
you. May God aid you. 

"Your imperial Majesty's loyal servant, 

"(signed) Sergius Witte." 

That letter, which exemplifies some of Witte's defects 
and qualities, had not the slightest effect on the Tsar, who 
had been well aware of his eminent subject's opinions and 
sentiment on the subject from the outset of the war. At the 
end of July of the same year Witte wrote a sharp private 
letter ^ to Count A. Heyden, from which I extract the 

* Witte gave me copies of many of his important letters. A great many 
others passed through my hands when wo were putting all his correspond- 
ence in order for his memoirs. This particular letter to Count \. Heyden 
is dated the I7th/30th July, 1905. 



296 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

following passage: "I held the opinion that we ought to 
have accepted the terms which Japan offered us (Kurino 
himself, I may say, made them to me personally) at the end 
of July, 1903. These terms were entirely befitting. Had 
that been done there would have been no war. Next I was 
of the opinion that we should have made peace before the 
fall of Port Arthur. Then the conditions offered to us . . . 
would have been somewhat worse. I further maintained 
that it was incumbent on us to conclude peace before the 
battle of Mukden. Then the terms as compared with those 
of 1903 would have been still more unfavourable. It was my 
conviction that we ought to have made peace when Roshdjest- 
vensky made his appearance in Chinese waters. At that 
moment the terms would have been almost the same as 
after the Mukden engagement. Lastly, in my judgment, it 
is our duty to make peace before a fresh battle is fought 
with Linievitch's army." 

It is known only to a few persons now living that in the 
early summer of 1904, that is to say some months after the 
outbreak of the war, Witte had expressed his desire to meet 
Hayashi in order to consult with him as to the best way to 
end it. The Japanese minister consented to meet him some- 
where on the continent, but the matter was then allowed to 
drop because the Tsar would not hear of it. 

How well the Japanese understood the position of 
Russian ministers and their entire dependence on the Tsar 
may be inferred from this passage in one of Hayashi's 
letters written about that time : ^ '1 have great respect and 
faith in Mr. Witte, but he is not now in a position of in- 
fluencing 2 the Council of Tsar with his advice, and even 
supposing he is in power, yet he can never be his own 
master, since Tsar holds the authority to veto whatever 
Mr. Witte may do.*' 

This is not the place for a detailed account either of the 

* Dated 9th March, 1905; London, 4, Grosvenor Gardens. The letter is 
addressed to M. Galy. 
'I have left the late ambassador's English unchanged. 



THE FAR EAST 297 

Portsmouth Peace Conference ^ or of the strenuous but vain 
efforts which were put forth by a number of private indi- 
viduals to end the war sooner. The first man to go to work 
earnestly was Witte, who had incurred the Tsar's dis- 
pleasure for asking permission to meet the Japanese minister 
to the court of St. James, Viscount Hayashi, before the war 
was more than five months old. In the following year the 
names of a certain M. Galy, Count Benckendorff, the com- 
mercial attache at the Russian Embassy, M. Rutkoffsky, and 
Baron von Eckhardstein of the German Embassy crop up, 
but they only write or talk. Nothing can be done. Hayashi 
quite naturally connected Witte's name with the idea of 
peace, as did most Japanese. His name was a household 
word in Nippon. A few years before, when M. Izvolsky was 
Russia's envoy plenipotentiary in Tokio, several ministers, 
courtiers, and other notabilities had asked him to endeavour 
to arrange that Witte should visit Japan, where he was 
thought much of as Russia's most eminent statesman. And 
M. Izvolsky wrote or telegraphed to Petersburg transmitting 
the invitation and urging its acceptance. Witte's reply was 
curt, and to the effect that travelling to Japan formed no 
part of his business. Later on, however, it turned out 
that the only reason why the wish of the Japanese ministers 
was not fulfilled was the Tsar's resolve that Witte should 
not go to Japan. Here again the personal intervention of 
Nicholas II. was felt as an impeding factor. And now once 
more Hayashi's wish to meet the statesman in Berlin could 
not be fulfilled because Nicholas II. had set his face against it. 

On the other hand, Japan was unwilling to take the first 
step. "J^P^"'" Hayashi had written in February, "will 
welcome peace, and will cultivate friendship with her 
present enemy after the conclusion of peace." But, he added, 
the proposal must come from the power that began the war. 

At last President Roosevelt had the moral courage to take 

* I possess all the documents, confidential and others, that passed be- 
tween the interested governments and statesmen on the subject, from the 
letters of M. Galy and Viscount Hayashi in l"\-bruary, H)o5. and those 
of M. Tialy and Witte. down to the little note scribbled by the Tsar in 
pencil inviting the successful peace-makers to visit him at Hjorke. 



298 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the initiative, without which the appalHng human sacrifices 
in the millet fields of Manchuria might have gone on some 
months longer. The two belligerent empires closed with the 
proposal unhesitatingly. As soon as the Tsar had thought 
the matter over, he offered the dangerous mission to 
Muravieff,^ his ambassador in Rome, Nelidoff being unable 
for reasons of health to travel so far afield. Lamsdorflf had 
suggested the name of Witte, but the monarch negatived it 
without hesitation. Just when Muravieff had also begged 
to be excused, a letter was received by Lamsdorff from M. 
Izvolsky, who, it is alleged, was the Tsar's delegate in petto 
and was then representing Russia at the court of Denmark. 
This missive eulogised Witte, declared that his prestige in 
Japan was enormous and would facilitate his task of peace- 
maker, and warmly advocated his appointment. Lamsdorff 
availed himself of this opening to press the matter again, 
and Nicholas II. finally decided to delegate Witte to the 
United States.^ He at once sent for me and asked me to say 
what answer I, were I in his place, would return to this 
offer. That was Witte's usual way of eliciting a frank opinion, 
to which he invariably brought careful consideration and a 
perfectly open mind. He always consulted those about him 
in whose judgment he had confidence, even when he had 
strong grounds for presupposing that the advice would be 
diametrically opposed to his own leanings or preconceived 
resolve. When I had given him my views on the offer, he 
said, "That is exactly how I thought you would look upon 
it. Now this is what I think: I have been chosen not so 
much to render a service to my country as — figuratively 
speaking — to stumble and break my neck. They really want 
to go on with the war. It is calculated that the chances of 
my striking up a peace on really acceptable conditions are 
superlatively slight, and that in all probability, therefore, I 
shall fail. Then I shall be dead and buried. But my well- 
wishers go further and argue that if I should succeed in 

*The ex-Minister of Justice, a clever cultured man and no relation to 
the defunct Minister of Foreign Affairs. 
•On 29th June (Russian style), 1905. 



THE FAR EAST 299 

ending the war on the terms that unfortunately are con- 
gruous with the military situation, my name will become 
odious to every self-respecting Russian." 

"And what have you decided to do?" I asked. 

"I will accept and go. I hope you will come too and help 
me." 

I soon saw that President Roosevelt's invitation had 
elicited, in the ruling spheres of Russia, the merest notional 
assent. In the mind of the Tsar the firm intention of put- 
ting an end to the war can hardly be said to have existed. 
Nicholas II. communicated through his ministers with the 
principal notabilities, militar}^, naval, and civil, and asked 
them to give him the benefit of their opinion on the advisa- 
bility of ending the war. And the vast majority of the answers 
were distinctly unfavourable. Having perused the secret 
reports of Generals Linievitch, Sakharoff,^ Kuropatkin, 
Admiral Birileff, and others, I began to fear that the conflict 
would go on. The War Minister Sakharoff's report began 
thus: "In reply to your letter of the i6th June, No. 1060, 
I have the honour to inform you that, in my judgment, under 
the present conditions to conclude peace is impossible, 
because one cannot admit that Russia should confess herself 
beaten by Japan." ^ Kuropatkin, who, after the death of the 
Foreign Minister, Muravieff, deliberately inclined to a con- 
ciliatory policy in the Far East, and who possessed the ways 
and means of knowing the true state of things there, was 
enthusiastic in his plea for continuing the war in Manchuria 
and for patience in Russia, while his promises of decisive 
victory were so confident, so emphatic, so frequent and 
circumstantial that it would have been rash were the crown 
to treat them slightingly so long as it maintained him at the 
head of the forces. 

Thus on the eve of the Portsmouth Conference the 
chiefs of the army in Manchuria were quite confident of a 
speedy victory and ultimate success, and were consequently 

* Sakharoff's report was marked "extxcmcly secret," and contained a 
detailed estimate of the Russian and Japanese troops in Manchuria. It 
was dated i8th June (ist July), 1905. 

■ Sakharoff then goes on to say what he would advise if his view should 
be rejected. 



300 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

impatient of the folly of the mere civilian "who craved for 
peace" before the army had plucked a laurel in the cam- 
paign. Russian military critics, who could and should have 
known the real facts, calculated that, as things then stood, 
the odds were largely in favour of Linievitch's army, which 
was also increasing in numbers much more quickly than the 
enemy's troops. Telegrams and petitions were received by 
the score from the seat of war imploring the imperial 
generalissimo to confide in his soldiers, who were thirsting 
for glory and victory. In a word, the decision to close with 
Witte's suggestions and enter into negotiations with Japan, 
although to the few it seemed obvious, imperative, pressing, 
needed more insight and courage than one imagines at 
this distance. Those who knew how restless the nation had 
grown and what ravages disaffection had made in the army 
rated the estimates of Kuropatkin and Linievitch at their 
true value, and saw that an immediate peace was Russia's 
last hope of salvation. 

The Finance Minister,^ who throughout this and the 
ensuing crisis behaved most patriotically, wrote a very 
sensible answer to the Tsar's question, which concluded 
thus, ''Generally speaking, in my capacity of Minister of 
Finance, I feel compelled to admit that the continuation of 
the campaign — things being in the condition in which they 
are at the war theatre and more particularly in the interior 
of the country — appears extremely difficult, and the conclu- 
sion of peace is, from the financial point of view, supremely 
desirable." But the general impression left in the mind of 
Nicholas II. by all these expressions of opinion was that 
victory was a mere matter of a few months more. And even 
later in the year, when Witte was already at Portsmouth 
negotiating with the Japanese, he received telegrams enjoin- 
ing on him firmness and enterprise on the ground that the 
army was now confident of victory. The Marine Minister, 
for example, telegraphed to his delegate saying, "Tell (Witte) 
that public opinion in Russia, including that of even the 

* At that time M. Kokoflftseff occupied the post His letter is dated the 
20th June (old style). 



THE FAR EAST 301 

highest circles, holds that no humiliating concessions must 
be assented to by us. The temper has changed, patriotism 
is aflame. Self-confident tidings are pouring in from the 
army." This was the minister whose own patriotism soon 
afterwards stood in need of defence and who a few months 
before had assisted the Emperor to perpetrate an act which 
it is hard not to qualify as treachery. 

As soon as Witte had definitely taken upon himself the 
conduct of the negotiations and the Japanese government 
had nominated the Mikado's delegate he asked me as a friend 
whether I would call on the Japanese minister in London, 
Viscount Hayashi, and lay before him an important proposal 
which, if accepted, would go far to render his labours in 
America successful. It was to the effect that instead of 
Komura the Marquis Ito should be sent to the peace 
conference by the Japanese government, and should be 
invested with full powers to arrange not merely such a peace 
as is ordinarily possible after a hard-fought campaign, but 
also cordial friendship, the outward sign of which would be 
an alliance for all purposes of the future development of the 
two peoples. This idea had already been suggested by 
Witte to Lamsdorff who had formulated it in one of his in- 
structions. It had also been mooted by Hayashi in a private 
letter which Witte had read. The passage ran : ''j2ip2Ln will 
welcome peace, and will cultivate friendship with her present 
enemy after the conclusion of peace." That, Witte re- 
marked to me, contained the solution of the Far Eastern 
problem and the clearing up of the misunderstandings 
between Japan and Russia. The war could not, he added, 
be followed by formal peace only ; it must be obliterated by 
friendship as well. Then, and only then, would peace be 
established on a solid basis. That was Witte's view l)efore 
he started for Portsmouth, and it became the keystone 
of the arch of Russia's foreign Far Eastern policy as M. 
Izvolsky envisaged it ever since. 

I called on Hayashi and opened to him Witte's desire and 
on what public grounds it was that he entertained it. As 
a matter of fact, Witte believed that Komura had thrust 



302 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

himself forward as Japan's chief plenipotentiary, while others 
held that Ito had declined to accept the mission which 
Komura had offered him. But whatever the cause of 
Komura's appointment may have been it was immutable. 
The Tokio cabinet was unable to accede to either of Witte's 
demands, and on board the German steamer that was taking 
us to New York I gave him a detailed written account of my 
conversation with the Japanese statesman.^ Hayashi in his 
memoirs alludes to this matter as follows: "I met (Dr. 
Dillon) two or three times whilst I was in London. When 
Count de Witte proceeded to America as the chief Russian 
plenipotentiary to negotiate the terms of peace at Ports- 
mouth, Dr. Dillon paid me a visit in London, and I had 
a long conversation with him on various subjects. The 
principal object of his visit to me was to request me to do 
everything which I could to induce the Japanese government 
to dispatch Marquis Ito to America as the principal Japanese 
peace commissioner. 

* Count Hayashi in his Secret Memoirs, published in London (Eveleigh 
Nash, 1915), devotes a couple of pages to the part I took in Russo- 
Japanese relations as he saw it, from which the following extract deals 
with the two treaties concluded between these empires : "In the beginning 
of 1907 Dr. Dillon contributed two articles to reviews in England, urging 
the necessity of a Russo-Japanese rapprochement. These articles were 
shown to M. Motono, our ambassador at St. Petersburg, by M. Izvolsky, 
who was at that time the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs. These 
articles were evidently written after conversation with some high person 
in the Russian government, and M. Motono believed that they indicated 
the undoubted intention of the Russian government of entering into an 
agreement with Japan on the lines laid down in the articles. M. Motono 
drew the attention of the Japanese Foreign Office to the articles and 
asked for an opinion on them. 

"I should say something about Dr. Dillon. His father was an English- 
man and his mother was Irish." [This is a lapsus calami. It was the 
other way round.] "He was educated at various continental universities, 
and he possessed several high diplomas of learning. For some time he 
was professor at various Russian universities and also had been the pro- 
prietor of a newspaper at Odessa. 

"He . . . resided in St. Petersburg. At the time I was minister and 
ambassador in London, Dr. Dillon was the St. Petersburg correspondent 
of the Daily Telegraph, and probably is so to-day. He certainly was most 
extraordinarily well acquainted with all Russian affairs, and any statement 
made by him in the Daily Telegraph having reference to Russia was al- 
ways regarded as being based on the highest authority." 



THE FAR EAST 303 

"When the negotiations were proceeding at Portsmouth 
it was Dr. Dillon who controlled the American press for the 
benefit of De Witte. At that time most of the prominent 
British and American correspondents who had collected at 
Portsmouth had gone there mclined to be in favour of 
Japan. 

'*Dr. Dillon used these men to publish the real existing 
state of affairs without any reserve whatsoever, and was 
unrivalled by anybody on the Japanese side in creating a 
favourable public opinion. He did it almost entirely by 
relying on the influence of the American papers, to whose 
correspondents at Portsmouth he always stated the exact 
position of affairs. On the Japanese side, on the other hand, 
nothing was done like this. True, there was a member of 
the Japanese Foreign Office staff attached to the Peace 
Commission, and it was supposed to be his duty to receive 
the newspaper men. In fact he had nothing else to do but 
that. But he made his principal task the denying of every 
statement which might appear. 

"In view of my experience in diplomacy I considered that 
such a course was a matter of the greatest regret. Comparing 
the action of the two sides at Portsmouth, as regards the 
press, it was only natural that the umpire's fan was pointed 
at Japan from the very outset of negotiations, and she was 
never able to recover from the unsatisfactory press position 
into which she allowed herself to fall, a position which was 
principally due to the fact that the Japanese authorities 
preserved far too much silence as to the progress of the 
negotiations. 

"With regard to the Russo-Japanese Agreement, about 
which I commenced to speak, Prince Yamagata and Prince 
Ito, as well as M. Izvolsky, recognised the absolute necessity 
of concluding an agreement such as had l)een outlined by 
Dr. Dillon in his articles to which I have referred." 

Seldom has a statesman found himself in deeper or more 
dangerous waters than Russia's first representative at the 
peace conference, under conditions which were understood 
lo have deterred professional diplomatists. He foresaw at 



304 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the outset the fate that was expected to overtake him. Having 
uniformly pleaded for peace w^hen it could have been had 
on advantageous terms, he was now called upon to conclude 
it on conditions which must strike every patriotic Russian as 
irksome and humiliating. Consequently, if he failed to come 
to an agreement, the finger of scorn would be pointed at the 
man who had blamed others for not undertaking what he now 
admitted to be impossible, while if he succeeded he would 
be open to the charge of having betrayed his country. But 
there was another consideration more discouraging to him 
than these: whatever peace he might make would be no 
better than a truce unless he could also strike up a genuine 
friendship such as Japan had so often before proffered and 
Russia refused. And his proposal to work in that direction 
was now vetoed by the Tsar who, seemingly, was indulging 
in mental reservation. But was either nation prepared for 
the sudden transition from war to friendship ? That was the 
question to be solved. Witte's very first step, before he had 
even set foot upon American soil, was to obtain a clear and 
correct idea of the light in which Japan would regard a course 
which seemed the outcome of statesmanlike and compre- 
hensive views. And the result was disheartening. Japan 
had changed her mind. That dismal fact was elicited before 
the conference met. The outcome of Witte's ruminations on 
that reverse was the historic wireless message which I sent 
across to London from mid-Atlantic. 

The course of the negotiations at Portsmouth and the 
creditable part played by President Roosevelt in preventing 
their failure have not yet been forgotten. It would, however, 
be well worth recording the experiences of Witte during 
that trying ordeal, the influences against which he had to 
contend, the necessity and the difficulty of winning public 
opinion in the United States, and of preparing a way for 
Russia's access to the American money market and con- 
ciliating the Jews, with whose leaders there he had a long 
talk, ending in mutual promises. The Tsar was particularly 
anxious that the failure of the conference, which he deemed 
very probable, should not be attributable nor attributed to 



THE FAR EAST 305 

the Russians, and the ways and means of bringing this to 
pass — while honestly endeavouring to arrive at a satisfactory 
agreement — constituted the subject of many of my talks 
with Witte in the Portsmouth hotel. This was natural seeing 
that it was I who was designated, in case the conference 
broke up without a peace treaty to show for its labours, 
to write a long explanatory telegram in Russian, addressed 
to the Tsar, stating the case for his plenipotentiaries and 
exculpating them from all blame for the failure. Witte was 
to sign that telegram, of which I would send an English 
translation to the Daily Telegraph and enable all other 
journalists to telegraph it at the same time to their papers. 
All our strategy was inspired by these motives from the day 
when Witte through me sent from mid-ocean one of his 
most important utterances on the subject of the nego- 
tiations down to his manoeuvres at the last sittings of 
Portsmouth. 

What Hayashi had said of the Russian statesman in one 
of his letters before the peace negotiations, that he would 
have to bow to the Emperor's will, seemed now to be coming 
true. He was constantly receiving messages of which the 
only effect and perhaps the main object was to make him feel 
this his dependence on the Tsar. Several times Nicholas II., 
through Lamsdorff, virtually assumed that the labours of 
the conference must come to nought.^ As a matter of fact, 
about a fortnight before an agreement was come to Witte 
asked me to write in haste the Russian telegram for the Tsar 
and to read it to him.^ I did so, and he approved it fully.' 
The main obstacles to peace consisted in Japan's demands 
for a money indemnity and for the retention of Sakhalien * 
and the limitation of Russia's fleet in Far Eastern waters. 

*On the loth August, Lamsdorflf informed Witte that in case the con- 
ference fails the Tsar wishes him to visit certain centres in the United 
States in order to win the sympathy of the population for Russia. 

'About the 15th or i6th August. 

■ It is among his papers. I also have a copy which is not now accessible 
to me. 

*The northern half was (as Komura afterwards explained) to be sold 
to Russia for 1,200,000,000 yen. 



306 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Witte in a telegram summarised the situation for his govern- 
ment as follows : ^ "We did not agree respecting payment 
of military expenses, Sakhalien, restrictions of the fleet, the 
vessels in neutral waters; yet on Monday the final sitting 
will be held, and for that reason if there is no concession by 
one side or the other we shall separate. Japan's intentions 
after that are unknown. Probably they will give way on (lo) 
about ships in neutral waters and on (ii) respecting limita- 
tion of fleet. But they won't abandon (5) about Sakhalien, 
nor (6) about military indemnity. In view of vast impor- 
tance of subject I think it ought to be considered and speedy 
resolution taken. Continuation of war would surely be 
greater disaster for Russia. We can defend ourselves more 
or less, but can hardly conquer Japan. Forecast of a favour- 
able result may be grounded only on exhaustion of Japan's 
resources. Am unable say what sacrifices can be made to 
avoid war and its horrors and whether internal conditions 
would terminate with unfavourable peace. It is obligation 
of imperial government to discuss subject and submit 
resolution to Emperor. I venture utter following modest 
thought: the fate of ships in neutral waters is important 
from point view of national dignity. But has no practical 
significance. It is the same with the limitation of our fleet. 
For practically we should not be able hold fleet in Far East 
capable of fighting Japs. But question of indemnity is 
important as touching Russia's dignity and her vital interests 
as well. Therefore it disquiets Russia's heart. Sakhalien is 
important because it was ours, is rich in minerals, and is a 
foreport of Amoor River. But Japs had certain rights there 
before ever we had acquired any. We did not utilise its 
wealth nor should we do so for very long. Japs are for 
guarantee that Sakhalien shall not be used for strategic or 
technical purposes against us. Even if island remains ours, 
still the straits that can be navigated by great vessels will be 
under the power of the Japs. Our main misfortune is that 
island is in hands of Japs, and I don't see possibility of 
recovering it at least for some decades to come. Deeming 
* 4th/ 17th August. 



THE FAR EAST 307 

it my sacred duty to set forth the above I await urgent 
instructions." 

Lamsdorff informed Witte ^ that he was mistaken in 
supposing that his powers would allow him to abandon the 
island of Sakhalien to Japan. This is by no means the case, 
and the Tsar wishes him to treat this explanatory statement 
as a supplement to his instructions. Another message ^ 
expressly forbids him to surrender Sakhalien together with 
the neighbouring islands and the railroad from Kharbin to 
Port Arthur. On the 13th August a telegram was received 
enjoining on him, if the negotiations failed, to arrange so 
that they might readily be resumed later on. Then it is the 
Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch whom the Tsar must 
consult before Witte may again meet the Japanese delegates. 
The Tsar had written : "Inasmuch as the negotiations are 
bound to be broken off in a few days, no armistice must be 
concluded."' On 19th August, Witte telegraphed: ''Final 
sitting will be Tuesday, 3 p.m., not Monday." On 19th 
August he was becoming nervous in consequence of the atti- 
tude of the Emperor and he sent this personal telegram to 
Lamsdorff: ''In view of the Tsar's resolution on my telegram 
No. 15 I consider further negotiations quite useless. Still 
I will wait, as you wish, for answers to my telegrams based 
on private conversation with Komura. In no case can the 
decisions be waited for very long: two or three days after 
Tuesday, but no longer. Congruously with your despatch 
No. 432 I will endeavour to arrange so that together with the 
Japs we may request President to summon new conference 
whenever he may deem it opportune — so as not to shut the 
door entirely." 

The Tsar's resolution which thus discouraged his pleni- 
potentiary was this sentence scribbled across Witte's tele- 
gram about Japan's demands: 'Tt has already been said: 
not a rood of territory, not a rouble of money for military 
expenses. On this ground I will stand to the end." The 
next notification is that Nicholas II. — for he it was that made 

* Secret telegram. No. 384. iRth/jist July. 

' 1 2th August. • 19th August 



308 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

every decision except the most important one of all, which 
as we shall see Witte deliberately wrested from him after 
long reflection — refuses to cede the southern half of Sak- 
halien and pay for the northern part.^ Then comes the 
statement that the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch finds 
Japan's peace conditions inacceptable, and Lamsdorff adds: 
"His Majesty's final decision and the imperial instructions 
respecting the breaking off of the negotiations I can com- 
municate to you only after my personal loyal submission, 
probably to-morrow evening." ^ 

To this Witte pertinently replied: "When conference 
is over and world gets insight into our work it will say that 
Russia was right to refuse indemnity, but it will not be with 
us on question of Sakhalien. For facts are stronger than 
arguments and mental combinations, and the central fact is 
that the Japs possess Sakhalien and we cannot take it back. 
If, therefore, we wish to shift blame for failure of conference 
to Japanese shoulders we must not refuse both the cession 
of Sakhalien and also indemnity. If we want sympathy of 
America and of Europe too we must give definite answer, 
taking Roosevelt into account." 

At last the knell of the conference appeared to sound. 
A telegram was received which after a short preamble 
terminated thus: "In view of all this it has pleased 
his imperial Majesty to command you to break off further 
discussions with the Japanese delegates if they are not 
empowered to abandon the exorbitant claims they have put 
forward." ^ Another despatch of the same date authorises 
Witte to apprise President Roosevelt that the Tsar has 
ordered the abandonment of the debates, to thank him for 
his co-operation, and to hint that under more favourable 
conditions Russia would again meet Japan's representatives 
and talk the matter over. A third message sent from Peters- 
burg on the same day enjoins on Witte to inform Lamsdorff 
the exact date when negotiations are to be formally broken 
off, as the Tsar's government must issue a communication. 

But Witte, now in sight of the goal, would not be trifled 

*2oth August. '21st August "22nd August. 



THE FAR EAST 309 

with in this way any longer. He took things into his own 
hands and decided on his own responsibility that he would 
not carry out the Emperor's instructions and break up the 
conference. It cost him a great effort to make this resolve. 
Here is an extract from the message in which he announces 
it to Lamsdorff: "Congruously with the instructions re- 
ceived we would break off the negotiations to-morrow and 
make due communication to the President. But in view of 
the letter received from the President which has been 
forwarded to you in extenso, and which calls for a reply from 
his Majesty, I consider it inadvisable to end the sittings 
before that reply has come. I will try, therefore, unless the 
Japs raise difficulties, to postpone the final sitting until that 
reply has come. With the Japs I think we have finished, 
but to break off before his Majesty's answer is received 
would, I fear, be to offend the President. And it seems 
advisable to do nothing to drive the President over to the 
Japs who, even as it is, have done their utmost to win 
America's sympathies." 

A curious thing happened on the eve of the agreement 
when the Tsar's plenipotentiary, after having painfully dis- 
lodged the mountains of obstacles which had separated him 
from the goal, stood at last in sight of it, and within a few 
hours of attaining all that Russia could reasonably expect. 
Between him and the precious objects for which he had been 
working there suddenly arose the insignificant figure of 
Nicholas II. commanding him to end everything immedi- 
ately on receipt of the despatch and return home. This is 
how it came about. On 27th August he had telegraphed to 
the Foreign Secretary as follows: 

'To-day I was informed through the secretaries that 
Takahira wished to speak to me. I signified my readiness to 
receive him in my room after dinner. On entering Takahira 
said that in view of the fourteen hours' difference in time at 
Tokio he had not yet received reply. Therefore, he would 
ask me to fix the sitting not for to-morrow but for Tuesday. 
I replied I considered I had no right to refuse request. But 
I again declared most categorically that on no account will 



310 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

we consent to go back upon the decisions taken congruously 
with the last imperial instructions, that I will reject every 
new proposal without referring it to Petersburg. Therefore, 
if he reckons upon our yielding he is wasting his time and 
ours and keeping the world on tenterhooks to no good 
purpose. Apparently Takahira acquired conviction that I 
meant what I said. Having thanked me for postponement 
he withdrew. From my conversation with him I came to 
conclusion he was acquainted with Tsar's answer to Presi- 
dent and generally with negotiations with Meyer in Peters- 
burg." The next day Lamsdorff answered thus: **28th 
August. On your telegram of yesterday No. 42 it pleased 
his Majesty the Emperor to write: *Send Witte my com- 
mand to end the discussions at all hazard to-morrow. I had 
rather go on with the war than await gracious concessions 
from Japan.' " Luckily for Russia, Witte paid no heed to 
this behest and ended everything satisfactorily. 

The odd way in which Nicholas II. received the tidings 
that his plenipotentiary had secured peace for Russia and 
indirectly a new lease of power for the reigning dynasty was 
wholly in keeping with that monarch's character. On the 
morning when Komura and Takahira gave way and the 
terms were agreed to, Witte sent this message to the Tsar: 
*T have the honour to inform your imperial Majesty that 
Japanese have accepted your demands respecting conditions 
of peace, and in this way peace will be restored, thanks to 
your wise and firm decisions, and in precise congruity with 
your dispensations. Russia will remain in Far East the great 
power she was hitherto and will ever remain. We set our 
whole mind and Russian heart to the fulfilment of your 
behests. We beseech you graciously to forgive if we failed 
to achieve more. Your loyal servant, Sergius Witte." 

The next day brought an answer. I remember the eager- 
ness with which my friend snatched it and ran his eye over 
it, and then the change that came into his face as he threw 
it to me and exclaimed, "Good God! Read that!" This 
is what I read:^ "Peterhof, 30th August, 1905. Do not 

*The telegram wap in Russian, but in Latin letters. 



THE FAR EAST 311 

sign the conditions of the peace negotiations until amount 
for keep of war prisoners is fixed and ratified by me after you 
have notified it. Nikolai." That was the imperial message. 
No thanks, no tribute of recognition. Not a word more. 
Witte's ex-pupil the Grand Duke Michael behaved differ- 
ently. From him came these brief but cordial words: "My 
heartfelt congratulations on brilliant termination of grandiose 
work achieved for well-being of dear Fatherland." 

Witte grew impatient and apprehensive. He kept specu- 
lating on what was going forward in Peterhof and Peters- 
burg and ruminating on the strange mental workings of the 
Tsar. And the things he apprehended were dismal, but I 
believe quite possible. But I cheered him up and prophesied 
that before the end of the year he would have received the 
title of Count. This prediction irritated in lieu of soothing 
him, for he was prepared for something very different from 
that. The nervous strain was great. On the third day, how- 
ever, his suspense was ended by a chilling telegram from the 
Emperor which grudgingly paid a tribute to the benefactor 
of his country and sovereign. It ran thus: "I express to 
you my thanks for the able, firm conduct of the negotiations 
which you worked out to a good issue for Russia. Convey 
my gratitude to Baron Rosen and the remaining delegates. 
Nikolai." 

It was not until the whole world, including Kaiser Wilhelm, 
had sung the praises of Russia's greatest statesman that the 
Tsar, unbent a little, joined the chorus of applause, and 
seemed to recognise the worth of the service rendered by 
his most distinguished subject. But that is another story 
which brings us to Bjorke and the strange doings there of 
Nicholas II. and the German Kaiser. 



CHAPTER XVf' 



The Secret Treaty of Bjorke — I 

Of all the extravagant and, one might add, irrational actf 
of the weak-willed sovereign who at last gave the death-blo'W 
to the Tsarist State the secret treaty, consisting of four brie 
clauses, which he concluded with Kaiser Wilhelm at Bjork( 
in July, 1905, occupies a foremost place. Politically it was j 
deed of surrender to the only formidable rival of his Empire; 
a covenant which crowned the suicidal process he had alread] 
inaugurated when he ordered Witte to accept Germany'' 
proposals for a commercial treaty.^ The commercial treat j 
bound Russia economically to the Teutons, was in fact the 
first step towards reducing her role to that of one of their 
colonies, while the Bjorke agreement gave official recogni- 
tion to the Kaiser's cherished plans for the permanent re- 
organisation of Europe, placed the resources of the Russian 
Empire at his disposal for their realisation, and implicitly 
handed over France to his mercy. Wilhelm II. could not 
dispense with Russia's co-operation in the work of constrain- 
ing France to enter into an alliance which she would never 
have accepted of her own free will, and Nicholas II. foolishly 
pledged himself to supply it. From the only other point of 
view worth considering, the act marked the Tsar as a de- 
generate on whose mind no political ideal, no wise principle 
of international policy had stamped itself durably. It may 
be worth while to cast a glance in passing at the scheme 
which Wilhelm 11. , as the representative and spokesman of 
the German people, had formed and was working inde- 
fatigably and m.ethodically to embody. 

The psychological diagnosis, so common in France and 
Britain since the outbreak of the Great War, which represents 
Kaiser Wilhelm II. as a maniac of some kind and degree, is 

*That ruinous arrangement was negotiated between Biilow and Witte 
and their expert advisers in the summer of 1904. It is the same treaty 
that at present obtains between the two countries (March, 1918). 

312 



THE SECRET TREATY 313 

one of the symptoms of the self -deluding propensities of the 
Entente nations. It is an injustice to one's people to belittle 
their adversaries, and it is self-degradation to defame them. 
The Kaiser has probably more to answer for than any other 
ruler known to human history, and future generations will 
associate his name with the most appalling crime against 
mankind ever recorded, but it avails us nothing to gainsay 
the fact that in all his exertions for what he supposed to be 
the good of his people he had remarkably clear conceptions 
and a right understanding of the relation between cause and 
effect. The tenacity, resource, and efficiency with which he 
worked to perfect his armies, to build a navy, and to arrange 
the requisite political conditions for the attainment of his 
principal aim challenge recognition which one may bestow 
without committing oneself to anything like approval of that 
aim. It can hardly be doubted that he himself believes in 
its loftiness. Therein lies his force and the force of the whole 
German people which shares that belief. They are animated 
)y that living, incandescent faith which melts away in its 
blazing flame all individual and other interests except the 
welfare of the collective organism as they misunderstand it. 
That is one of the many differences between the Teuton 
races and others. Parenthetically, I should like to record my 
conviction that the Japanese, in at least as high a degree as 
the Germans, are permeated by this sustaining faith which 
together with such invaluable qualities as vision, organisa^ 
tion, grasp of detail, loyalty, and a fine sense of measure 
foredestine them, whether or no we like the prospect, to 
Dlay a most important part in determining the trend of 
luman progress. 

It is needless to remark that the qualities of unscrupu- 
lousness in the pursuit of ends, insensibility to what Entente 
peoples regard as points of honour, coarseness in address, 
arrogance towards inferiors and equals from whom nothing 

s expected, obsequiousness and flattery towards those who 
are to be exploited or duped, and the countless fonns of 
Juplicity and unveracity as helps to success appeal neither 

;o the Latin nor to the Anglo-Saxon nations. But one would 



314 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

do well to remember that this list by no means exhausts 
the catalogue of Teuton characteristics; of their positive 
qualities as well as of their repulsive defects the war has 
given ample illustrations. Adaptability to changing circum- 
stances is one of the positive forces of the Teuton race. It 
runs through their latter-day history like a white thread in 
a dark texture. It is their source of elasticity in organising, 
of coherence in politics, of docility and buoyancy in battle. 
Yet the judgment rashly passed on them by some leaders 
of the Entente nations is that they are stiff, unbending, 
wanting in initiative, inaccessible to new ideas, easily dis- 
concerted and demoralised. As a matter of fact it is the 
non-Teuton peoples who are slow to quit their habits of 
thought and action and accommodate both to the new con- 
ditions of existence. Of the latter-day Teutons at their best 
and their worst Wilhelm II. is a type. 

In ethics the Kaiser is a law unto himself, and his morality 
is in essentials that of the entire German race. He also has 
his own ideals of international life which, if I who have 
heard and read a great deal about them may venture to say 
so, differ in only one or two particulars from President Wil- 
son's League of Nations. It is superfluous to add that these 
differences are momentous. 

The German ideal in international ordering is the equiva- 
lent of absolutism in national politics. As the State governs 
the nation so a chosen race should direct the Continent and, 
if possible, the world, and its instrument at the outset can 
only be force. The leading role falls naturally to that race 
which has given proofs, not only of the greatest, but also of 
absolute aptitude to do it justice, and this race is the Teuton. 
Opposed to this conception stands that of the democratic 
peoples of the world who are for republicanism with a 
tendency to anarchy at home and for equality in the dealings 
of State with State. Their instrument is law and public 
opinion, but their sluggishness in working out this con- 
ception, which they might long ago have done, to a fruitful 
solution is apparently invincible. And the reason is not far 
to seek. Most of the political organs of these advanced 



THE SECRET TREATY 315 

communities of the west, such as the monarchy, the republic, 
the legislative chambers, the press, appeared to Wilhelm II. 
as little better than mere shams. The so-called democratic 
peoples exist, he alleged, for the few, and the few are among 
the most narrow-minded and ignorant of God's creatures. 
Their institutions are in many cases mere veils that conceal 
from the people a degree of insensibility to their needs and 
sufferings greater far than that which the English and the 
French ascribe to the German government. And that is why 
they have made no serious effort to draw nearer to the 
national and international ideals towards which they profess 
to be striving. If their professions were sincere, why, he 
asked, have they never been accompanied by an organising 
policy? The reason is, he answered, because, if the reform 
were carried out, the reformers' easy job would be gone. In 
democratic lands the ignorant talker comes nearly always to 
the top, and the nation has to be content with appearance in 
lieu of reality. Accessibility to new ideas and the systematic 
use of the intellect are checked and discouraged there. In 
Germany, despite what the French and the English say to 
the contrary, it is very different. There the career is really 
open to the talents; things, however imperfect, are at least 
what they seem, and the rulers are both competent and 
efficient. 

The Kaiser professed to believe that under the German 
system nature is made more subservient to social needs than 
under any other, and that the higher and nobler elements 
of human character have freer play there. Consequently the 
other races, and in particular the Russian, French, and 
Italian, would stand to gain by closer intercourse with the 
Germans, and would benefit by the incidental advantage of 
substituting a moral relationship which would exclude war 
for the state of nature that exists at present between them 
and all the independent States of Europe. To establish this 
intimate intercourse has been the Kaiser's goal ever since 
he had a policy of his own. His way of reaching it was to 
induce or oblige the continental powers to assent to the 
formation of a somewhat looser league than that which keeps 



I 



316 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the component parts of the German Empire together, and 
to work on that fulcrum for the ehmination of war from 
continental politics, and also for the establishment at some 
future period of a supreme board of government for all 
European nations on which other great peoples would also 
be represented, as are Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, Saxony, etc., 
on the German Federal Council. 

Hopefulness and a high degree of faith in humanity thus 
organised and directed, or as we should say Teutonised, 
marked some of the characteristic speculations in which 
Wilhelm II. indulged. The general public has perhaps 
forgotten the sensation produced by the picture which he 
fathered representing the European nations putting the 
"yellow-skins" to flight, with the inscription, "Peoples of 
Europe, protect your most sacred possessions." ^ On that 
canvas, a reproduction of which he sent to President Carnot, 
France occupied a foremost place by the side of Teutonia, 
whereas Britain was relegated to the background. 

Some of the persons who mentally connected this little 
incident with .the main political movements of Europe! 
fancied that the Kaiser's ideal was as disinterested and 
generous as the kindred visions of Turgot or Condorcet. 
I confess I could never bring myself to share this view. 
What Wilhelm aimed at, it seemed to me then and seems to 
me still, was a vast world-organism such as was dreamed of 
by some of the popes, and presided over by the head of the 
Hohenzollerns, rather than the revival of the empire of 
Charlemagne. It was a vast scheme of polity conceived for 
a continent, or rather for humanity in its entirety, and there- 
fore from a much broader angle of survey than that of 
Charlemagne. The marvellous potency with which it 
appealed to men of German blood is intelligible to those 
who realise the intensity, the passion born of their faith in the 
unbounded potentialities of their race. To them they are 

* Japan's genial statesman, Ito, told me in presence of several other 
persons, including the late W. T. Stead, that when he was received by the 
Kaiser he espied that picture hanging in the apartment where they met 
Tact and fine feeling are not among the quahties of Wilhelm II. 



I 



THE SECRET TREATY 317 

the salt of the earth, capable of progress which has no fixed 
limits, and capable too of adjusting the social and political 
forces of the world to the magnitude of the community and 
the variety of its temperaments, needs, and aspirations. And 
in verity this was no mere abstract speculation, no spinning 
of theory from the phrase-germs of philosophy, but a con- 
crete scheme complete in all its parts. And the first nucleus 
of the vast society which he was thus eager to build up was, 
as I have said, to be composed of the great powers of the 
Continent — a league of European peoples of which the 
crowned head of the German Empire would be the ex-officio 
leader. 

For many years I have been acquainted with the gist of 
the colloquies which he had with my friend Witte on the 
subject, whose temper in some few respects resembled his 
own, but who differed from him profoundly in other ways. 
The impulsive and unbalanced German monarch is certainly 
endowed with some of the qualities which in the times of 
yore went to the making of founders of religions — fire and 
mysticism, ecstatic vision and shrewd practical sense, con- 
centrated passion with a slight touch of dreaminess, the 
whole combined in a personality who believes that his true 
vocation is the handling of men. Wilhelm's plans were 
marked by grandeur of conception and solidity of prepara- 
tion. Moreover, however low one may rate his adminis- 
trative abilities — and many of our people affect to regard 
him as little better than a fool — in his mode of tackling the 
problem on its feasible side and dealing with the recalci- 
trant or indifferent governments whose co-operation he 
needed, he knew exactly what it was that he required from 
each and how best he could obtain it. In grappling with 
Russia, for example, he assimilated the idea which I had 
long been recommending to the notice of the British govern- 
ment, that the only arrangement which could really bind the 
Tsardom — if any compact could — must be concluded 
directly with the Tsar himself and, if possible, not through 
the ordinary diplomatic channels.^ 

' Cf., for example, Cnntemporary Rcrnno, June and July, 1904, "The 
Obstacles to an Anglo- F^ussian Convention," by Iv J. Dillon. 



318 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

The most arduous, delicate, and dangerous part of the 
task was the yoking of France to Germania's chariot. For 
the wound caused by the amputation of Alsace and Lorraine 
had never cicatrised. It still festered and rankled. The 
Kaiser employed all the arts of conciliation with which he 
happened to be conversant. He lavished honeyed phrases 
and graceful compliments on almost every Frenchman that 
came in his way from my first French friend, the ex-minister 
Jules Simon, to the manufacturer of chocolate. He had 
condoled with the widow of Marshal MacMahon, had 
pardoned two Frenchmen interned on a charge of espionage, 
and for some ten years he applied this system of cheap 
beneficence to living down the antipathy which was being 
strengthened by the very acts intended to remove it. He 
had failed to touch the responsive heart of France. He 
had never been able to visit the city on the Seine. His 
policy of giving a helping hand to the French in their 
efforts to extend their colonial empire had not touched 
either the people or their rulers. He never understood 
their mentality. 

During the Fashoda crisis I felt that he had an excep- 
tionally favourable opportunity, the like of which might not 
perhaps occur again, and I was curious to watch the use he 
made of it. But it brought him no returns. Shortly after- 
wards another and still more auspicious conjuncture was 
formed by the Boer war, when practically all Europe was 
arrayed against Britain. Almost automatically the coalition 
of continental nations shaped itself. A generous gesture on 
the part of Wilhelm II. and he might have effected much of 
what he was striving after. But the devices and expedients 
which he and others imagined and put in motion during 
that period were jejune and barren. Russia's Foreign 
Secretary, the vulgar Count Muravieff, was in Paris in 
November, 1899, ^-nd calling on Delcasse he "suggested" 
the advisability of making "representations" to England 
in concert with France and Germany. The suggestion, like 
so many others that have a Russian, French, or British 
appearance, had been "made in Germany," approved by 



THE SECRET TREATY 319 

the Tsar, assimilated by the Tsar's minister, and reproduced 
as a Russian proposal. The idea underlying it was the same 
that had actuated the three powers in their intervention to 
upset the Treaty of Shimonoseki between China and Japan. 
Delcasse answered affirmatively, adding that the repre- 
sentations which he favoured would be courteous and theo- 
retical, and would merely offer to the English the assistance 
of the republic in concluding an honourable peace. As 
this answer was not what had been expected the matter 
dropped. In the following year ^ Muravieff tried again, and 
with somewhat better results. On his way back to Petersburg 
he stayed at Potsdam, where he reported to Biilow and the 
Kaiser what he had heard and seen - in the French capital. 
They were only half satisfied with the result attained by the 
undiplomatic Russian, but resolved to make the best of it. 
I have grounds for believing that the lukewarmness of the 
French government was less marked than has since been 
asserted. The joint move could have been arranged without 
difficulty if the Kaiser had had either the enterprise to pay 
the full price then and there, or else the patience necessary 
to wait until some future time for a more abundant harvest 
from the seed he was sowing. The immediate consequence 
of what he actually did was to frustrate his whole plan and 
estrange France from Germany more completely than before. 
He began by impressing the Russian and French governments 
with the seriousness of the concerted action contemplated, 
the need for a long sustained effort and a united front, and 
consequently the removal in advance of all causes that might 
lead to differences among the three powers themselves 
during their diplomatic crusade in favour of the Boers. And 
by way of removing the most dangerous of these causes he 
deemed it indispensable that France, Russia, and Gennany 
should guarantee the integrity of each other's European 
possessions. That proposal revealed the cloven foot. Its 
acceptance would have meant that the lapse of twenty years 
had sufficed to make the French nation resign itself to the 
loss of Alsace-Lorraine and ratify voluntarily the treaty that 
* In 1900, * In February, 1900. 



320 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

gave these provinces to Germany. Thereupon the negotia- 
tions broke down and subsequently the Kaiser had the 
hardihood to assert — in order to ingratiate himself with the 
British — that his object in laying down that deterrent con- 
dition w^as precisely to render his own scheme impossible. 

But the most favourable moment of all for the execution 
of Wilhelm's design was in 1904-5, because Russia, being at 
first busied and then crippled by the Manchurian campaign, 
France was deprived of her mainstay. And as her diplomatic 
position in Europe depended very largely on the worth of 
her alliance with Russia, the prostration of this Empire left 
the republic almost isolated. As the Kaiser himself wrote 
to the Tsar, England "could not defend Paris'* with her 
fleet. And according to the traditional German idea, the 
capture of Paris connotes or entails the conquest of 
France. 

It was evident, therefore, that the only way to get the 
republic to join a combination of the kind which Wilhelm 
desired was by constraining it. There was no alternative. 
Now constraint could be effected only with the active help of 
Russia. And as the Tsar was Russia, he must win over the 
Tsar. At the first blush the task seemed easy enough. 
Nicholas 11. was a timid, shy, insignificant creature who 
seemed unable to offer effective resistance to a clever cam- 
paign of suasion and intimidation. Already he had proved 
so weak-willed that the Kaiser managed the Kiao Chow 
business with ease. But that was Wilhelm's only victory 
over his imperial relation. Since then the Tsar had been 
careful and kept out of further temptation. He shunned the 
society of his Teuton kinsman. Indeed, cordiality could 
hardly be said to mark the relations between the two. The 
calculating German monarch, who now needed the services 
of the Russian Tsar, was resolved to ascertain the reason and 
remove it. And he went to work in this ingenious fashion. 
Witte was sent to Germany to negotiate with Biilow a com- 
mercial treaty ^ — a delicate and momentous task just then 
because this accord was foredestined by the Berlin govern- 
ment to be the groundwork of Germany's future prosperity. 
* In the summer of 1904. 



THE SECRET TREATY 321 

The treaty with Russia was the first to be concluded on the 
new lines and was to serve as the model for all others. 
Moreover, Witte had been the bitter opponent of all Ger- 
many's rapacious proposals on the subject, and had even 
declared that under no conditions would he assent to this 
particular arrangement. But the vicissitudes of the war had 
made the Tsardom pliant, and it was now willing to pay the 
Kaiser's price for the privilege of employing in the Far East 
the troops necessary for protecting its frontiers in the 
West. And that price was the treaty on Germany's terms. 
As Nicholas II. could not well refuse this, he sent Witte 
with a number of experts to do the best he could under the 
trying conditions. And what this statesman actually effected 
was worthy of admiration. 

Witte was known personally as well as by reputation to 
the Kaiser. He had negotiated through delegates a com- 
mercial treaty with Germany under Alexander III.,^ and 
certain of the stratagems he then employed were still talked 
of in Petersburg and Berlin. For example, Count Caprivi 
was determined that come what might Russia should give 
Finland the right of concluding a separate autonomous 
treaty with Germany, and Count Shuvaloff, the Tsar's 
ambassador in Berlin, apprised Witte of this condition 
sine qua non. Witte, without consulting the Emperor, sent 
an urgent telegram to the ambassador demanding the 
absolute withdrawal of the demand, and in case of a refusal 
threatened to recall the delegates from Berlin. No reply 
came for several days, and it looked as though Germany 
would not give way. Witte became uneasy and said to one 
of his friends, *T am anxious, but I have the consolation of 
thinking that Caprivi is not less so, and at this moment he 
is probably walking up and down in his study Hke me, un- 
certain what to do." At last Shuvaloff telegraphed that the 
Kaiser's government would not press the point. Witte re- 
porting next day to the Tsar confessed that he had exceeded 
his powers, but that the Germans had given way. "And 
that's as it should have been," responded Alexander III. 
who shook hands with him warmly. 

* In the year 1893. 



322 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

But despite this success the negotiations were moving 
slowly. Witte was dissatisfied and apprehensive. The 
Junkers were obstructive. In order to silence them the 
Russian Finance Minister decided to try the effect of a ruse. 
He requested his friend Kovalevsky to draft a bill for pre- 
sentation to the Council of the Empire forbidding the Polish 
harvesters, without whose cheap labour the East Prussian 
could not live/ to hire themselves out of Russia any more, 
unless the German government should give way to the Tsar's 
ministers on the contentious questions under discussion. 
The bill was duly drawn up, printed, signed by the wily 
Finance Minister, and then all the copies but two were 
burned. Of these two Witte contrived that one should be 
stolen and given to Caprivi, while the other found its way 
to a Prussian agrarian journal as *'a very confidential State 
paper.'* Caprivi laid the important document before the 
deputies at a secret sitting and the Junkers gave way all 
along the line. Witte had also had interesting talks with the 
Kaiser about the reconstruction of political Europe, which 
set both of them pondering over the problems involved. 

But since that time the Russian statesman had experienced 
the inconstancy of the German monarch. Wilhelm 11. had, 
however, of late frequently lavished genuine praise and heavy 
German flattery on the Tsar's most trusted servant. "If you 
were my subject," he once remarked, *T would employ your 
services as Chancellor, and there is nothing that we two 
working together could not accomplish. But men like you 
are the world's rarest possessions, and the Tsar is a lucky 
monarch." Now Witte was very sensitive to flattery and 
could be led, up to a certain point, by a potentate like 
the Kaiser who condescended to swing the censer briskly 
before his face. Wilhelm more than once expressed his 
regret that he could not have the benefit of consulting 
the genial Russian whenever he needed advice, and his 
hope that Witte himself would not hesitate to offer him 
suggestions whenever they occurred to him, especially 

* In the year 1905 Prussia employed 454,348 foreign workmen, of whom 
124,184 were Russian subjects. In the year 191 1 she required 820,831 
foreign working mei\, of whom 204,522 were of Russian nationality. 



THE SECRET TREATY 323 

if the matter were important. He would ever welcome his 
counsel and feel grateful for it. They must look upon each 
other as friends. On Witte this soft sawder produced the 
intended effect. The first occasion that arose after that for 
appealing to Wilhelm was when the agreement between the 
latter and the Tsar respecting Kiao Chow was about to be 
executed. The Russian, as I narrated in a preceding chapter, 
repaired to the German Embassy, saw Von Tschirschky, 
reminded him of the Kaiser's permission to appeal to him, 
and said that as the leasing of the Chinese port would bring 
disaster to Germany and Russia, he implored the Emperor 
to waive his claim to the execution of the compact. The 
Kaiser was wild with rage, but answered that Witte was 
obviously unaware of the circumstances that preceded and 
conditioned the conclusion of the covenant, and he kept 
Nicholas II. to his bargain. Witte too was angry and often 
complained bitterly to me of the Kaiser's impulsiveness, 
fitfulness, and inconstancy. 

The former cordiality was not restored until the Tsar's 
great subject on his return as peace-maker from Portsmouth 
was received by Wilhelm at Rominten, and then it lasted for 
less than a week. 

But to return to the year 1904. When the Kaiser's promise 
to guarantee Russia's western frontier called for some prac- 
tical manifestation of Russia's gratitude, Witte was deputed 
by the Tsar to repair to Germany to bargain with official 
representatives of the government and beat down their 
exorbitant demands for concessions in the new commercial 
treaty. He afterwards narrated to me his varied experiences 
there, and in particular the conversations he had with Von 
Biilow.^ 

This is not the place to give to the world the details of 
the interesting story. It may, however, be permissible to 
state that the Kaiser extorted from the Tsardom, for this 
mark of his friendship, a tribute which Stolypin and Witte 
l)Oth assured me was much greater than any war indemnity 
on record. I needed no one to tell nic that the renewal of 

* All these conversations, ninny of which were dict.ited to me after lunch 
or dinner, arc extant, hut tluy arc not all accessible at present. 



324 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

this accord would create friction intense enough to start a 
conflagration. In conversation with the Tsar's ministers in 
March, 1914, I gave free utterance to this conviction. The 
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs admitted that I was 
probably right, but requested me, if possible, to abstain 
from drawing public attention to this danger. Witte con- 
firmed my view, emphatically repeating, "It will assuredly 
lead to war." He was right. As a matter of fact, before the 
negotiations had begun it became one of the main factors of 
the present struggle. 

Russia was not a free agent in 1904 when she acquiesced 
in Germany's demands. So long as she was unfettered her 
resistance had been invincible. But as usual the Teutons 
opened their campaign most ingeniously. On old Christmas 
Day, 1902, they raised the duty on corn from 43 to 78 per 
cent, and enacted that it could not be lowered by commercial 
treaties. Owing to this law they could afterwards plead that 
their hands were tied. This increase meant for Russia an 
annual tribute to Germany — and from one source only — of 
eighty million marks which would become greater every 
year. Witte responded by raising the duties on German 
manufactured goods. When pourparlers began the Teuton 
method was again resorted to and the demands preferred 
were exorbitant. Russia held out for a lower com tariff, 
Germany for the abolition of the excess duties on manufac- 
tured goods to be levied by the law of January, 1903, and also 
for permission for all the Kaiser's subjects, without exception, 
to purchase and possess land in any part of Russia on the 
same footing as the subjects of the Tsar. 

Witte declared that he preferred a tariff war to economic 
subjection of that degree and duration. Nothing, he added, 
would induce him to entertain the demands of the Berlin 
government. But the Tsar's Yalu speculation and its sequel 
had bereft his Empire of its independence. The Japanese 
were defeating Russia's armies in Manchuria. The nationali- 
ties in the interior and the revolutionists there and abroad 
were joining hands and menacing the throne and the regime. 
Nicholas II., unable to withstand the pressure exerted by 



THE SECRET TREATY 325 

the Germans, sent Witte to Berlin to save whatever could 
still be saved from the Teuton prehensile hands. The states- 
man was welcomed as a messenger of good tidings by the 
Kaiser and his Chancellor and cordial relations were ap- 
parently re-established between them. In spite of Witte's 
relative success the nature of the concrete result of the treaty ^ 
may be inferred from this one detail which was typical of the 
remainder. Owing largely to the concessions made by this 
agreement the Prussian ploughman earned by the same 
amount of work as his Russian comrade, and with far less 
risk, 400 per cent. more. The Russian press often reverted 
to this servitude, characterised it as a crushing war in- 
demnity,^ and adjured the government not to ratify it for 
another term of ten years in 19 16. From the end of 191 3 a 
puissant agitation was going on all over Russia to hearten 
and oblige the Tsar's government to adopt a wow possum us 
attitude when Germany's demand for the renewal of the 
treaty for a further period of ten years would be presented 
to them officially. Everywhere in the Tsardom voices were 
uplifted against continuing to the Germans these same 
opportunities of enriching themselves and draining the 
country economically. In the month of March, 1904, for 
instance, a congress of South Russian exporters passed a 
resolution calling upon the Tsar's government to emancipate 
the Empire from its economic dependence on Germany *'vvhich 
is humiliating for a great power." But the Kaiser's govern- 
ment was firmly resolved, come what might, to insist on the 
prolongation of the commercial treaty for another decennium. 
In these mutually incompatible aims lay one of the chief of 
the proximate causes of the Great War. 

But to return to the final negotiations between the German 
Chancellor and the first plenipotentiary of the Russian 
government. Witte and Biilow were living at Nordemey ' 
during the negotiations to suit the Chancellor's convenience. 

* Concluded in 1904. 

'Cf. the article of A. Stolypin in the Novoye Vremya of 4th/i7th 
March, 1914. 
'An island in the North Sea, province of Ilanovcr. 



326 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



1 

ilow fl 



One evening after the work of the day was over Biilow 
turned to Witte and said/ " The Emperor has a curious and 
inquiring mind. He is never satisfied unless he can get to 
the bottom of things. Now one of the every-day mysteries, 
if I may so term them, which he has not yet fathomed but 
hopes to solve with your assistance is this : Your Tsar is 
cold and reserved towards him, and apparently as the result 
of design rather than temperament. He never unbends. 
Cordiality whenever it appears is not real. And yet the 
Kaiser is most attentive to Nicholas H., and has been from 
the very beginning. He feels drawn towards him. He is 
never tired of thinking out ways of being agreeable to him. 
He has sent him several deputations, as you know. But do 
what he may he never elicits a really warm response. Now 
the Kaiser wishes me to ask you, who are a past master of 
psychology, why is that? His Majesty hopes you will shed 
some light on the subject because by doing this you will be 
rendering a precious service to your country as well as to 
ours. All that my sovereign wants to know is what attitude; 
on his part will enable him to estabhsh cordial relations ■ 
between the two monarchs and therefore between their 
respective peoples.' 

"While Biilow and I were together on that island," Witte 
said to me parenthetically, "he was receiving every day 
communications from the Kaiser. I don't remember any 
day that did not bring at least one. And I had the impres- 
sion that this awkward question was the result of one of the 
latest. I answered it in a friendly spirit. But before I did 
so Von Bulow went on, Tlease speak as frankly as you like. 
Everything you say will be received with respect and grati- 
tude, and anything that you suggest will be carried out. 
For we have absolute confidence in you.' I then replied, 
'The answer to your question is that the Kaiser does not 
know the Tsar, does not understand his nature and, conse- 
quently, cannot approach him in the right way.' *And what 
is the right way?' 'If you like, I will give you a recipe for 

*What follows was dictated to me by Witte himself, to be used after 
his death, if I should survive him. 



I 



THE SECRET TREATY 327 

dealing with my sovereign.' Tlease do/ 'But I am not at 
all sure that I ought. It is a delicate matter, and after all 
the Kaiser is a man who has his own ideas of people and 
things.' ... 'I assure you he will be delighted.' . . . That 
evening we got no further, because I deemed it best to wait 
and hear. 

"Next evening when we had shaken off the heat and the 
worries of the day, the Chancellor returned to the charge. 
'I can now assure you absolutely that the Kaiser will be 
truly obliged to you for your diagnosis and advice. He will 
not take offence. I am speaking this evening with fi?st-hand 
knowledge.' 'Good, then I will be brief. The Kaiser is too 
bluff and too patronising. He is hail-fellow-well-met with 
the Tsar, whose conception of his own dignity and of his role 
in the world is that of the monarchs of the Jewish theocracy. 
A soft haze of mysticism refracts everything he beholds and 
magnifies his own functions and person. I am sure the 
Kaiser has not allowed for this. I daresay he writes, 'T 
advise you, I suggest, etc." H so, he is making a mistake, 
and in the Tsar's eyes a capital one. What he ought to do 
is to ask for light, to seek for help, to beg for advice, for 
co-operation from one whom he recognises as sagacious and 
far-seeing. 

" Tf I were the Kaiser and had need of his assistance, I 
would invent problems to lay before him. I would say, for 
example, "I am not sure whether it would be wise to dismiss 
Von Billow after that last injudicious speech of his in the 
Reichstag. You who know the world and understand men's 
motives so thoroughly could advise me. How does it strike 
you?" Now what your Kaiser does is the very opposite. 
He treats Nicholas II. as a much younger brother, patronises 
him, and rubs him the wrong way. I can give you an example. 
It has come to my knowledge that when the Tsar was last 
in Darmstadt the two monarchs had a private conversation, 
during which your Emperor l^ehaved as though he were a 
very big brother and the Tsar a very little one. Part of the 
time he held his arm over the shoulder of Nicholas II., and 
afterwards, too, he overshadowed and eclipsed him. I 




328 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

believe they were photographed together in that posture. 
Well, these things hurt. 

" 'I will give you one more example, and I shall consider 
my promise redeemed. Some time ago the Kaiser passed 
near Darmstadt without visiting the Grand Duke Ernst 
Ludwig. Now that was a slight. You may say that the 
Grand Duke is not an equal and that the Kaiser cannot be 
expected to treat princelets always as though they were em- 
perors. That may be true enough in the abstract, and it may 
apply to German princes who are this and nothing more, but 
in this particular case the person offended was the Tsaritsa's 
brother, and the sting was indirectly felt by the Tsar him- 
self. These may seem, nay they are, small things, but they 
tell.' "... 



CHAPTER XVII 

The Secret Treaty of Bjorke — II 

Turning to me Witte said, "I had in my mind at the 
time, but I did not mention it to Biilow, a much more 
striking instance which had made very bad blood at the 
Tsar's court. It was an incident — a characteristic one — 
which had happened at military manoeuvres presided over 
by the Kaiser. The Grand Duke of Hesse, who took part in 
them, was being caustically criticised by his war-lord who 
said, 'So you want to have the Black Eagle conferred on 
you, I understand? Very well. Show that you deserve it. 
Answer me a question, but answer it at once and without 
hesitation. When a hussar mounts his charger which foot 
must he raise first, the right or the left? Quick!' The 
Grand Duke did not rise to the occasion. He remained 
silent. Then the Emperor said, 'You want the Black Eagle 
and yet are unable to answer a simple question like that,' and 
with a sneer he left the parade ground. That monologue 
found its way to Peterhof very shortly afterwards. And it 
was brooded over. But I kept that to myself." About six 
months later Biilow thanked Witte fervidly for his advice, 
which he said was most wise and efficacious. "The Tsar," he 
added, "has, as you told me, a great store of amour propre/' 
"After that," Witte went on, "I must say that the Kaiser's 
manner towards Nicholas II. was much less overbearing 
than before. He evidently remembered my recipe. He ad- 
vised the Tsar not to give way during the Japanese war, but 
he gave the advice in an acceptable form. But after all he 
was knocking at an open door. For Nicholas II. hated Eng- 
land then, and for three reasons: first, because of the treaty 
she had made with Japan which ruined his own political 
schemes; second, because of English lil)eralism which 
sympathised with Russian liberalism and gave asylum to 
Russian revolutionaries; and third, because of the growing 

329 



330 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

influence of the Jews in Britain. He sometimes spoke as 
though all the English were Jews. 

^'Before I left Norderney I received a letter from the 
Russian commercial attache in London, RutkofiFsky, asking 
me whether I could meet the Japanese minister, Hayashi, 
with a view to talking over the ways and means of ending 
the war. Without mentioning this letter, I casually asked 
Billow what Germany would think and say if peace were 
concluded at this conjuncture. He had just received one of 
the daily communications from the Kaiser. He answered, 
*If I were only a friend of Russia's, I would say without 
hesitation or reserve, "make peace." But Germany is not 
merely a friend — she is a devoted, a sincere, an intimate, a 
unique friend of Russia's, and for that reason she cannot 
give such poisonous advice to her. Make peace indeed !' 

"Months passed. As you remember I went to Paris, on 
my way to Portsmouth, and you went to London to carry 
my proposals to Hayashi for the Japanese government. 
France was full of her own troubles just then, of which the 
source was Berlin and the pretext Morocco. Delcasse had 
already been dismissed. I saw Rouvier and Loubet. They 
both counselled me to make peace. I needed no stimulus, 
however, to move me in that direction. You know what I 
felt and thought of that accursed war which may yet bring 
others in its train and ruin some of the cultural achieve- 
ments of generations. I saw it coming and my exertions to 
stave it off cost me my post of Finance Minister. When I 
passed through Paris in 1903 I knew it was imminent and 
I felt impelled to call on Delcasse, then Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, and apprise him. But on reflection I gave up the 
idea because Delcasse would not have believed me. But, 
instead, I called on Alphonse Rothschild and told him what 
my forecast was. Rothschild queried, *Are you quite sure? 
The reason I ask you is because Delcasse is of the opposite 
opinion and I should like to have something more than one 
opinion balancing another. He swears there will be no war.L 
I answered that I had unfortunately no doubt. ^\ 

"France, were she better informed, might have prevented 



THE SECRET TREATY 331 

that wanton slaughter — almost without an effort. And she 
ought to have prevented it in her own interests, for of all 
the non-belligerent nations she had most to lose by it. To 
England it seemed rather a gain because it would weaken 
her old enemies and render them both more amenable to 
reason in the future. To Germany it would bring no loss 
and some important advantages, such as the commercial 
treaty. It would also relieve her of the necessity of pre- 
paring for a war on two fronts which was the constant fear 
before the eyes of the Berlin statesmen. Austria considered 
it a boon, the like of which would probably never return for 
centuries. And Aehrenthal's merit lay in his clear per- 
ception of that fact and the promptitude with which he 
acted on it. France alone stood to lose tremendously by 
Russia's defeat. Her savings were invested in Russian enter- 
prises. Her prestige and international status depended 
largely on our military strength. But the statesmen of the 
republic saw nothing, felt nothing, suspected nothing. By 
the beginning of 1905 the upshot was outlined with painful 
distinctness. Russia was worsted, the balance of European 
power was upset, and France's specific gravity had fallen low. 

"France had to find a substitute for what she had lost in 
the Japanese war, and she turned towards England. This 
was a good enough move in the circumstances. My criticism 
of it is that Delcasse allowed himself to be dictated to by 
circumstances instead of taking them in hand and directing 
them. The Anglo-French understanding, which you had 
so often advocated, was at last realised and the Kaiser was 
incensed to find himself confronted with an accomplished 
fact instead of being told all about it at the outset. A friend 
of mine and of his said to him, There is nothing in it 
except what everybody knows. And that is harmless enough.' 
But the Kaiser replied, 'If that be so, why was it hidden 
from me? The concealment makes me suspect something 
that has not emerged into the light. And whether or no it 
is there I am warranted in suspecting it.' 

"Then Wilhelm devised the Morocco incident in order 
to punish France and test England's loyalty to the republic. 



332 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

I know that he did not believe that the English would stand 
by their late opponents so soon after Fashoda, and he was 
not alone in his estimate. But events belied it. That was his 
first mistake. Holstein, the spider who spun his webs in the 
Berlin twilight, held the opposite view and left no stone 
unturned to move his government to act upon it. But the 
Kaiser went his own way, as he so often does. His visit to 
Tangier and all that came of that is universally believed 
to have been the execution of a plan drawn up with delibera- 
tion and neatness. But although his ultimate aims were 
definite and can be reconstructed to-day without fear of 
error — I have amused myself by putting them in sequence — 
the details were often left to chance, and his fateful visit to 
Tangier was one of these details. It may be said that these 
particulars possess meagre historic interest, but they char- 
acterise the man and help one to appreciate his policy. Well, 
I can tell you that he never intended to make that extraordi- 
nary visit until his yacht had actually left Lisbon, and he 
did not intend to land even when the yacht was in the road- 
stead opposite Tangier until a French marine ofBcer, very 
innocently, encouraged him by giving a sanguine view of 
the state of wind and wave and weather. That is an absolute 
fact. . . .1 

*'The Kaiser's visit became a landmark of history, how- 
ever, and Europe had to reckon with its consequences. 
These might have been less painful for the republic if its 
statesmen had displayed more self-discipline and less levity. 
But we must take people as they are, and Clemenceau was 
true to himself when he unburdened his mind and stated 
that France, according to the War Minister, was not prepared 
for war. No doubt it was a rash course to run the risk of a 
war with no allies except a prostrate Russia and an England 
who could help France only with her ships and, as the 
Kaiser brutally put it, 'could not save Paris.' Still blufT was 
a possible game, but that was not exactly the way to play it. 

"When I reached Paris, on my way to the United States, 

*I have had this story, together with all the details, from two other 
independent and absolutely trustworthy sources. 



THE SECRET TREATY 333 

the people there were engrossed by the Morocco business 
and by Germany's daring and successful intervention in the 
internal politics of France. And undoubtedly it was an 
amazing spectacle. The removal of Delcasse, then a popular 
minister, in a country which was proud of being democratic 
in spirit and a republic in form, was a marvellous achieve- 
ment. True, it was effected only with the co-operation of the 
French themselves. But they co-operated with zeal and 
perseverance. Rouvier hated Delcasse and wholly dis- 
approved his policy as chauvinistic, and the Germans, who 
are single-minded and united, played off the one politician 
against the other, and gained their ends without changing 
or even modifying their own plans for either. The only 
modification they made came later, after my return from 
the Peace Conference at Portsmouth, and then it was brought 
to pass by my intervention. I may say that my short-lived 
friendly relations with the Kaiser enabled me to ward off a 
European war. The play of democratic institutions in 
France and Italy — I know England far too little to be able 
to speak with first-hand knowledge on the subject — is a 
comedy and will continue to be a comedy until it becomes 
a tremendous tragedy. It is a repetition on a more moderate 
scale of the unedifying doings that went on in Poland shortly 
before the first partition. Or look at it if you will in this way : 
The Germans are aiming at the same kind of influence over 
so-called democratic countries of Europe that Russia and 
England are actually exercising in Persia — they hope for a 
victory to be scored by intelligence, system, and organisa- 
tion over ignorance, incompetence, and lack of cohesiveness. 
If the conditions continue unchanged the odds are big in 
favour of Germany. Cannot your statesmen be got to 
realise that? ... Or has Fate taken the matter out of their 
hands? 

"The newspapers in Paris published a telegram some- 
where about 24th-25th July, I don't remember the exact 
date, announcing that the Kaiser had gone in his yacht on a 
visit to the Tsar to Bjorke. Rouvier was very dis(iuieted at 
the news and asked mc wh.it it inoant. 'How is it possible,* 



334 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

he exclaimed, 'that our ally can demonstrate his friendship, 
private or public, for the man who is playing havoc with 
France's policy and her peace of mind, and is behaving as an 
enemy who has not yet declared war against us only because 
he is not sure that all the circumstances are auspicious?' I 
quieted Rouvier as best I could, saying that the Tsar is not 
merely loyal but is punctiliously so, that I felt certain the 
visit was one of courtesy and that it was imposed on him by 
the Kaiser — as it really turned out to be — and that if he had 
declined it the consequences would probably be as un- 
pleasant to France as to Russia. I talked for some time in 
this conventional style, but I did not feel assured myself. I 
resembled a lawyer pleading from a brief sent by a shady 
solicitor. While I was talking to the Premier, all the cir- 
cumstances of the Kiao Chow incident unrolled themselves 
before my mind's eyes: I saw the two monarchs with 
important mien playing with the lives of a multitude of 
men, and one of them hardly conscious of his responsibility, 
but both deeming themselves to be beings of a different 
species from their fellow-mortals. I also remembered the 
Kaiser's question, which Biilow put to me at Norderney, as 
to how he should tackle the Tsar, and I wondered whether 
the Tsar had again allowed himself to be duped. On re- 
flection, however, I persuaded myself that that could hardly 
be, because there was nothing mischievous left for him to do 
— so far as I could then see. But Rouvier, whose thoughts 
ran on other lines, was excited, and raising his voice ex- 
claimed, 'How could such a thing be possible? When you 
were leaving Petersburg was it arranged? Did the Tsar tell 
you anything about it?' 'No, it was not arranged. If it had 
been I should most certainly have known from the Minister 
of Foreign Affairs. But I will telegraph to him at once.* 

"I telegraphed to Lamsdorff, and received a statement 
from him by letter which, as well as I remember, was written 
before he could have received my telegraphic inquiry. You 
can verify the dates in my papers." ^ 

* Witte's surmise was correct. Lamsdorff's letter bears the date of the 
8th/2ist July, 1905. 



i 



THE SECRET TREATY 836 

Witte received LamsdorflF's letter from Professor 
Martens. It enclosed a copy of the government instructions 
to Baron Rosen and contains the following characteristic 
reference to the famous interview at Bjorke. I translate it 
literally: "In the evening of the 6th/i9th July, his 
Majesty the Emperor received a telegram from Kaiser 
Wilhelm, from the eastern coast of Sweden, with contents 
of a most obliging character. At the end of it ^ the German 
Kaiser added, 'I should be happy to have the possibility of 
meeting the Emperor unceremoniously!' ^ Considering that 
such an interview would be most useful and important at 
the conjuncture through which we are passing, his Majesty 
gladly consented and proposed to Wilhelm that he should 
repair to Bjorkesund, not far from Vyborg. The meeting will 
take place on Sunday, ioth/23rd July, towards evening, and 
will probably extend over a day and a half. It is unnecessary 
that I should accompany the Emperor because Biilow is not 
cruising with the Kaiser Wilhelm. 

*'I am of opinion that this event can produce only a good 
impression and one that is advantageous to us. Provided 
always that Wilhelm does not contrive to elicit one or other 
of those assurances and amicable promises which he after- 
wards knows how to exploit in such a masterly way. 

**I hope that you will have an opportunity of explaining 
to the French that the coming together of the two emperors 
has an exclusively friendly and family character. One among 
other evidences of this is the absence of their Ministers of 
Foreign Affairs. In any case, for France the impending 
conversations of the two monarchs cannot be other than 
helpful." 

How helpful they were the public knows by this time. It 
may not be amiss to reproduce here the exact text of the 
telegram in which the Kaiser practically invited liimsclf to 
the Tsar's dominions. It is in the Emperor's English which 
diverges occasionally from the King's: 

*As a matter of fact the telegram is much shorter than LamsdorfT's 
reference to it would lead one to infer. 
*In LamsdorfT's letter tins word is also underlined. 



336 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

"I shall shortly be on my return journey ^ and cannot 
pass across entrance of Finnish sea without sending you best 
love and wishes. Should it give you any pleasure to see me 
either on shore or your yacht of course am always at your 
disposal. I would come as simple tourist without any 
fetes." 

The Tsar replied at once as follows: ''Delighted with 
your proposition. Would it suit you to meet at Bjorkesund 
near Vyborg, a pleasant quiet place, living on board our 
yachts? In these serious times I cannot go far from the 
capital. Of course our meeting will be quite simple and 
homely. Looking forward with intense pleasure to see you. 
Nicky." From Nyland the Kaiser replied on 7th/20th July 
as follows: ''Most happy. Would it suit you if I arrived 
at your anchorage — Bjorkesund — on Sunday, ioth/23rd, 
evening? My yacht draws six and half metres water, would 
be thankful for a trustworthy pilot to lead us through the 
entrance. Please to communicate where you will anchor. 
Have kept the whole matter quite secret, so that my gentle- 
men on board even know nothing; also at home nobody 
informed.^ Am so delighted to be able to see you. Hope 
you will not be disturbed by my Nordland's Gessellschaft 
who always accompany me since fifteen years. Best love. 
Willy." After that the following three despatches passed 
between the pair before they came together on the historic 
evening of the 23rd : ''Shall be Sunday, ioth/23rd, after- 
noon, at Bjorkesund. Have given orders about trustworthy 
pilot. Place of anchorage will be between the islands of 
Bjorke and Kavitza. Till now have kept our planned meet- 
ing secret. So happy to see you. Wish you a smooth passage. 
Best love. Nicky." 

"Most obliged, expect to arrive on 23rd (loth) at seven 
evening. Please let pilot meet us off Hochland. Nobody 
has slightest idea of meeting; only my captain, who is 

*This message was sent from a liule Swedish port on the Gulf of 
Bothnia to the north of Stockholm. 

' Exactly as when he was on his way to Tangier, with this difference, 
that on that occasion he had not made up his own mind until the very last 
minute. 



I 



THE SECRET TREATY 337 

ordered to keep absolute secrecy. All my guests under 
impression of going to Visby in Gothland. I am over- 
joyed at seeing you again. Have most important news for 
you. The faces of my guests will be worth seeing when they 
suddenly behold your yacht! A fine lark! Tableaux! 
Which dress for the meeting? Willy." 

"Steamer with pilots shall await your arrival at south 
end of island Hochland ioth/23rd July at sunrise. Micha 
will accompany me. Best love. Nicky." 

Before touching upon the correspondence that had gone 
before, and of which the meeting and the work accomplished 
thereat were but the climax, it will be well to quote two more 
allusions to the interview which Witte received during his 
absence from Russia. The Finance Minister, Kokofftseff, 
telegraphing to him about the scheme for a consultative 
chamber, to be called the Duma, adds: *'A11 the time the 
Emperor is in good humour, being manifestly cheered up 
after his meeting with the German Kaiser." ^ 

Count Lamsdorff in a letter dated i6th/29th July, which 
he sent to Witte through the intermediary of the naval 
officer Russin, writes: "The Emperor was extraordinarily 
pleased with his interview with Kaiser Wilhelm, who in 
reality, however, talked little about the war, but expressed 
himself in favour of concluding peace with a view to re- 
storing order in the interior of Russia. What seemingly 
touched the Tsar was Wilhelm's proclaiming his firm con- 
fidence in the invulnerability of Russia's might. He considers 
the present ferment superficial, and believes that it can 
easily be made to subside. I do not know how far this 
optimism is sincere, but by means of it an excellent im- 
pression was made on the Emperor. 

"They talked of the affairs of Norway-Sweden and of 
the relations with France, with whom the Emperor Wilhelm 
considers it possible to establish closer intercourse after the 
removal of Delcasse, etc., etc. It is my opinion that these 
friendly assurances will lead up to more or less definite 

"The date of this message is 23rd July (5th Aupust), 190$. 



ita 



338 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

demands, on which it behoves us to look with the utmost 
circumspection." ^ 

How the French government professed to look upon the 
Bjorke interview appears from a confidential report that lies 
before me from an eminent diplomatist who will recognise 
the words of his own telegram to his government.^ "With 
regard to the visit of the German to the Russian Emperor 
the French Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs told me 
that the Russian government had not notified it, and that 
M. Witte was not informed of it before quitting St. Peters- 
burg, and that it was only after the meeting of the two 
emperors that the French government was apprised that the 
Kaiser had requested the Tsar to be allowed to pay him a 
visit of cordial amity. The Minister of Foreign Affairs 
assured me that M. Witte had called on him to explain on 
behalf of Count Lamsdorff that the interview of the two 
emperors was devoid of political character, and that nobody 
could pretend to know the particulars of the conversation 
that had taken place between the two sovereigns, although 
the rumour had been spread that Germany was aiming at 
getting France to strike up an understanding with her in 
order to act together in concert on the Far Eastern question. 

"I availed myself of the opportunity to ask the Minister 
of Foreign Affairs for some information on this subject. He 
assured me categorically that no advances had been made to 
the French government, and that he himself was formally 
opposed to any such understanding, inasmuch as he pre- 
ferred to have his hand entirely free on these questions.^ . . . 
Having learned that M. Witte had seen the ambassador of 
Germany in France I called on him shortly after my inter- 
view with the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The ambassador 
of Germany in France told me that ... he could not 

*As yet LamsdorfF knew nothing about the secret alliance concluded by 
the two emperors. 

' I withhold as irrelevant the name of the statesman, merely affirming 
that his report was laid before me at a time when I had not the honour of 
his acquaintance. 

'This was so obvious that I wonder the Russian ambassador in Paris 
should have had to announce it formally to Lamsdorff. 



THE SECRET TREATY 339 

understand how Russians like Witte could misunderstand 
the actual situation.^ Respecting the meeting of the mon- 
archs he told me that it was a visi: of courtesy and that it 
would be a grave error on the part of the French to ascribe 
real importance to it. According to a telegram which he had 
received he thinks he is warranted in saying that the Tsar 
was entirely satisfied with the meeting. But the circumstance 
that Russia and Germany are striving to belittle as far as 
possible the significance of this visit seems, to me, on the 
contrary, to prove that the meeting of the two emperors 
possesses some importance. ... I saw the ambassador of 
England in France, and he told me that the meeting of the 
two emperors was perhaps intended to prepare a cooling 
down of the relations between France and Russia, Germany 
having already had recourse to that policy in Morocco to 
sunder France from England. ..." 

The Kaiser's verbal profession of faith in the firmness of 
Russia's might was repeated in a telegram he sent to the 
Tsar less than a week after the interview,- in the course of 
which he wrote: 'T venture to advise promulgating (sic) 
Bouliguine Bill ^ as soon as possible. So that the repre- 
sentatives be elected soon. Meanwhile, till that has taken 
place, the peace conference will have been opened and the 
conditions become known for both sides." How thoughtful 
he was of the monarchist principle even abroad, and of the 
policy of attributing all individual successes to the sovereign, 
may be inferred from the following allusion to Witte's peace 
negotiations: "With the actual spirit prevailing in Russia, 
the disaffected masses would try to place the whole responsi- 
bility for all disadvantageable (sic) consequences on your 

*i.e., in its bearings on the necessity of concluding: peace without delay. 
I omit the passages irrelevant to the meeting of the nionarchs. I need 
hardly say that the diplomatist whose words I am quoting was and is una- 
ware that I was put in possession of his desixitch soon after he had sent it. 

*On the i6th/joth July. 

'This was a project for the introduction of a representative assembly 
with a consultative voice in legislation. It held the field until Witte and 
the Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevitch wrested the legislative Duma from 
the Tsar in October, 1905. It is to Bouliguine's scheme that the Kaiser 
alludes in his telegrams when he writes of "The Great Duma." 



340 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

shoulders and the successes as results on Witters personal 
manage (sic). It would be excellent as a first task for these 
representatives, if you gave them the treaty of peace after it 
has been formulated, to vote upon; thus leaving the odium 
of the decision to the country and thereby giving the Russian 
people a voice in the matter of their own prosperity, which 
they so much wish for. The outcome would be their work 
and therefore stop the mouths of the opposition. Best love 
to Alice. Willy." 

In this secret meeting with the Kaiser and the extra 
secret doings to which it led we again find the stream of 
tendency in the matter of Russia's most momentous dealings 
with foreign countries canalised and regulated, not by some 
far-seeing statesman or in accordance with any general 
instructions attributed to Peter, but by the changing whims 
of a puny whipster, of whom the best that one can say is 
that he knew not what he did. Befogged with fantastic ideas 
fostered by his courtiers, he worshipped himself as the 
source of all political wisdom and ignored even those whom 
he himself had chosen to advise him. His letters and the 
remarks he penned across various reports which are in my 
possession depict him as a man whose mind was affected 
by the mania of greatness. He resented every human 
endeavour to enlighten him. From the viewless spirits, 
indeed, he was willing enough to accept lessons whether 
they came through a table, a planchette, a medium, or a 
hypnotiser like Rasputin, but from a mere mortal, however 
experienced and clear-eyed, he would brook nothing short 
of acquiescence and obedience. A man of Witte's vehement 
pulsing force he could not tolerate in his environment, and 
even the meek and mild Lamsdorff, who felt himself exalted 
"in bowing down before the Lord's anointed," however 
he might counsel and plead and expostulate,^ was not even 

* Only once, so far as I know, did Lamsdorff venture on anything re- 
sembling an expostulation. It was after Nicholas II. had plunged his 
country into war and it took the form of a most loyal submission respect- 
ing a series of "justificative" documents which the Bezobrazoff gang had 
printed, and from which the minister learned for the first time how cun- 
ningly and wickedly he had been deceived by his imperial master. I 
possessed all these documents since the year 1905. 



THE SECRET TREATY 341 

listened to. He was the Emperor's tippet. Nicholas II. had 
no minister, Russia no leader. And his schemes were secret, 
his plans mysterious, his State actions clandestine. His very 
glance was furtive. Although most people around him had 
sounded his intelligence and plumbed his character, nobody 
whom I met understood him so perfectly as Witte. Not only 
could he describe graphically the workings of the Emperor's 
mind from their manifestations in his looks, words, gait, 
gestures, and voice, but he could often foretell his attitude 
in circumstances which were about to occur for the first 
time. The greatness, physical, mental, and moral, of Witte 
added the element of the grotesque to the smallness, the 
pettiness, and the pithlessness of his sovereign. *'He has the 
slyness of the maniac, and also the method and the stubborn- 
ness,** he used to say to me. "There is no trace of high 
spirit in anything he undertakes. His best actions are done 
as though his conscience pictured them as shameful crimes." 
But this solvent analysis did not impair the statesman's 
loyalty or sense of duty. 

One day Witte and I stood on the captain's bridge on the 
steamer that was conveying us to New York looking down 
upon a crowd of Czechs, Hungarians, Italians, Norwegians, 
Swedes, and Germans sprawling about on the third-class 
deck. "Look at these people," Witte said. "There must 
be, there certainly is, something radically wrong in the 
civilisation that throws them up as scum to its surface. You 
may say that they are not the dregs of that society. True, 
but that only darkens the colours in which I behold the 
sinister phenomenon. If the nations of the earth would only 
consent to abandon war as a means of settling international 
disputes, what a spring-tide of improvement we should 
experience! I don't claim that you can do away with 
violence once for all in this imperfect world of ours. But 
you can narrow its sphere surprisingly." "By another 
Hague Conference?" I inquired. "Don't mention that 
ignoble sham, I loathe the name of it," he exclaimed. "But 
listen and tell me what you think of what I am going to say. 

"When Kaiser Wilhehn paid his first visit to Petersburg 



342 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

after his accession to the throne I saw him and we talked, 
as you and I are talking now, feeling after some solution to 
the great social problems which are far more pressing than 
most of our trumpery issues. I remember one occasion in 
particular on which we discussed the differences between 
Europe and America with a view to examining the source 
of the advantages which the United States enjoy. It was in 
the German Embassy. The Kaiser said: 

" *You, M. Witte, are a European authority on tariff and 
railway matters. Have you, in the course of your researches, 
ever gone into the subject of what should be the normal 
economic relations between the two continents, Europe and 
America?' 'No, sire. But I am not sure that I have seized 
the drift of your question.' *Well, I'll put it more con- 
cretely. Did you ever reflect that America is living on 
Europe, drawing the life-sap from its peoples, and that the 
process, unless it be stopped in time, may end in prostra- 
tion? Now how can you stop it? There is only one 
effectual way, by checking the influx of agricultural produce 
and manufactured wares from the United States. I don't, 
of course, mean a complete and formal boycott, but a high 
tariff that would cause the importation curve to drop heavily.' 
*No, sire. I never thought of that, and now that you speak 
of it I am afraid it may prove difficult to find a suitable place 
for it among the ideas that lodge in my brain. For with the 
people of the United States we in Russia are on friendly 
terms. Interest as well as sentiment impel us to remain on 
this good footing. If we were to wage a tariff war against 
them I realise what we should lose, but I cannot see what we 
should gain. So far as Russia is concerned, there would be 
neither motive nor aim in the measure.' 'You are mistaken 
in thinking that it should be directed against the United 
States in particular. What I have in mind, and what could 
and should be done in the interests of all our continental 
peoples, is to levy a high tariff on all non-European wares. 
The American would then be liable as well as those of the 
other continents.' 

" That strikes me,' I objected, 'as primarily a political 



THE SECRET TREATY 343 

rather than an economic scheme, and it would, I feel con- 
vinced, make bad blood between the peoples affected. Our aim 
it has always seemed to me ought to be to bring together not 
to estrange. Ever since England's war against the people of 
the United States that people and we have been fast friends. 
And we wish to remain their friends in the future. If I am 
right in assuming that at the root of your Majesty's sugges- 
tion lies the sundering of the economical from the political 
question, then I am with you. Thus while I see no harm in 
our eating American bread, fruits, and other foods, I see no 
good in our spending so much European money on pre- 
parations for war that too little remains for these necessaries 
and for cultural purposes! 

" *It may be true,' I went on, 'that the importation of 
American corn challenges and deserves attention. The 
budgetary estimates appear to point in that direction. But 
even so, that to my thinking is only an imaginary danger or, 
at the worst, a very overrated one. The real peril lies in 
Europe itself and consists in the never-ending strife and 
feuds and wars, and worse than all in the noxious atmosphere 
of militarism which is asphyxiating the foremost peoples of 
the world. Militarism brings socialism in its train, and 
socialism breeds anarchism. The fact is that the armed 
peace of to-day is a thinly disguised war — but a war against 
civilisation. That is the cancer which is eating away the 
vital organs of the nations. So appalling are the sacrifices 
it necessitates that war itself would hardly be worse.' I 
remember suddenly thinking that my words would sound 
like a sermon in the Kaiser's ears and I stopped short, but 
he said, Tlease complete your thought.' I went on : 

"'Against whom are we making ready for war? Not 
against America, but unhappily against one another. Do 
we gain anything by these wars? Nothing. In the mean- 
while America and other overseas countries profit by these 
our intestine feuds. And by dint of thus losing the best of 
what she has and is, Europe will, in time, resemble an 
elderly lady who once was beautiful as well as young, and 
is now esteemed only for her past. And if this anarchism is 



344 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

allowed to continue long enough, Europe as an aggregate 
of political communities will have ceased to exist. It cannot 
be otherwise.' . 

" Then you don't approve the idea of our agreemg atx>ut 
a European tariff against America, or say rather non-European 
produce and manufactures?' *No, sire. If we cannot agree to 
strive after real and accessible boons we shall not unite on 
the more difficult problem of making sacrifices for imaginary 
or inaccessible advantages. What strikes me forcibly is the 
wonderful transformation that union or association would 
effect in the political and economic ordering of Europe. 
If our continent were one empire or one repubhc'— the 
Kaiser looked sharply at me when I pronounced the word 
republic, but he probably saw that in my thought it con- 
tained no application to actual politics— ^her voice would 
be respectfully hearkened to throughout the world. The 
heavy taxes that are waxing heavier every year would 
become very perceptibly lighter or else would purchase 
invaluable boons in lieu of shells and guns. Europe would 
be a syndicate run for the benefit of the whole commumty. 
And what is more, that syndicate could govern, or let us say 
guide, the world. But instead of realising that bright per- 
spective, we in Europe are at the mercy of each other to-day 
and may be at the mercy of America to-morrow and of 
Japan the day after. For while Europe is decaying new 
States are springing up. The United States was but an 
English colony a brief while ago. Now she is a world-power. 
Japan was a tiny island State quite recently. She is still very 
weak, but is growing and may become much stronger and 
even very strong in time.' 

"The Kaiser said, 'I am delighted to hear you unfold 
such excellent ideas because I agree with them in essence. 
But schemes are tested by their execution and their working. 
How do you count on realising yours? Look around upon 
Europe. You know how precarious the equilibrium is and 
how far we still are from stability. Propose a workable 
scheme. Mine is to make the continent strong by keeping 
out ruinous American exploitation. But I want to hear 



THE SECRET TREATY 345 

yours.' 'I, sire, would make all Europe one/ *A11 Europe?' 
'I mean continental Europe. England would have to be 
left out. She cannot become a member of the federation so 
long as she is a purely maritime power. Her geographical 
situation separates her from the continental States. If she 
had constructed the tunnel under the Channel and were 
thus joined with France her status would be different. 
Then she, too, would be a member of the United States of 
Europe. To-day she is not European. The sea severs while 
it defends her from the Continent.' 

" There,' exclaimed the Kaiser — who at that time was 

an ardent champion of an understanding with England 

*you and I are no longer at one. England is quite as much 
European as any continental State and may think herself 
more so than some; anyhow she must be got to join. Her 
adherence is a necessity. A United States of Europe with 
England left out would never do.' *I do not insist, sire. All 
that I aspire after is the cessation of armaments by eradicat- 
ing their causes. And that could be accomplished by the 
strenuous co-ordinated endeavour of the foremost minds 
of civilised nations.' That is precisely what I am trying to 
bring about. I want to do away with wars between European 
States and I think I see my way. But, as you say, the co- 
operation of the leading spirits of all countries is 'desirable. 
May I count on your help when the time comes?' *Yes, 
sire. I shall esteem myself happy to contribute in any 
degree to the attainment of such a desirable end. But I 
think time is needed. A social organism cannot be trans- 
formed in a hurry othenvise than superficially. And we 
need something more than that.' Truly, time is requisite 
to weld the nations of Europe into a federation. But we 
cannot make too great haste to take the first step. After- 
wards no power or continent will dare to question the 
behests of Europe. Economically and politically we shall 
lead the human race. Do you agree?' 'Yes, sire, I agree 
to everything except the I)oycotting of America. I also hold 
that economic and political measures must l)e studied apart. 
My idea is to begin the work by trying a political experiment, 



346 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

not an economic one, to bring together Russia, France, and 
Germany with as little laboured effort as possible, and that 
done we shall have gone far towards achieving the high 
purpose for which you are working. France^s adherence, 
however, is a necessity. With her partnership and co- 
operation we cannot dispense. Your Majesty adds England. 
All the better if that be possible. I even go further and say 
that the first aim must be the establishment of a United 
States of Europe. But if we were to begin by what would be 
considered a tariff war on America, I doubt whether we 
should make much headway.' 

"That was our conversation, as far as I can recall it now. 
But I have it in writing somewhere and if you remind me 
on our return home I will show it to you. It made a profound 
impression on me at the time. But let me add a curious 
detail which is worth remembering because characteristic. 
The conversation must have made a deep dent on the 
Kaiser's mind or else he wanted to make capital out of it, 
for he at once wrote out an account of it — a one-sided 
account in which my objections were slurred over or 
omitted, some of my views weakened, my plea for bringing 
France into the federation not mentioned, and worst of all 
a series of sophisticated arguments put forward for in- 
augurating an economic boycott of America. And this 
memorandum he presented to the Tsar. At that time the 
Kaiser was bitten with a mania for eliminating America 
from the European markets. Is it not odd that in his 
memorandum to the Tsar he should have passed over in 
silence my objections to his plan, and also everything I had 
uttered about France? 

"The Tsar smiled as he handed me the Kaiser's memoir, 
and said, *Read it at your leisure and tell me what you 
think of it. The Kaiser is full of it and wants to indoctrinate 
me. Jot down your views briefly when you have time. I 
don't agree with him.' Of course I had time. Having read 
the paper carefully I went over the ground and with ease 
demolished the sophisms with which Wilhelm bolstered up 
his plea for boycotting the United States. When I next 



THE SECRET TREATY 347 

went to the palace to report to the Tsar I put the case in a 
nutshell and he accepted my view and thanked me. He 
smiled when I grew animated in arguing and said that he 
was already convinced. 

"The fact is that at this period of his reign the Kaiser 
was visibly drawn towards England and earnestly desired 
an accord with that country. That explains why he reacted 
the moment I remarked that England being an island and 
having purely maritime interests to further and safeguard 
would hardly be qualified for membership of the League of 
European States until her territory was linked by a tunnel 
under the Channel to the Continent. He stopped me at 
once and fired off his objections one after the other until I 
gave way and said that the aim was of greater importance 
than the means. In later years he vacillated between England 
and Russia, uncertain with which one of the two he had better 
strike a bargain. As soon as he decided to weaken Russia 
he pushed her into the Far Eastern swamp. Of this I am 
absolutely sure. It was he who laid the snare into which 
the Tsar fell. It was he who countered and thwarted my 
policy of peaceful penetration and no annexation. It was he 
who during this very visit duped the Tsar and got him to 
agree to the virtual annexation of Kiao Chow. Nay, only 
think of it, at the very time when I was gravely discussing 
with him the ways and means of setting Europe on a plat- 
form from which she could move townrds a higher plane of 
progress, in the belief that this ennobling care was engross- 
ing his thoughts, the unscrupulous schemer was victimising 
the Tsar behind my back, pulverising the groundwork of 
my policy, and sowing the seed that has since sprung up as 
armed men. Wilhelm II. is the author of the war which 
we are on our way to America to terminate. That man has 
a heavy load on his conscience, but let us hope that he, at 
least, believes he is doing the best he can under dilTicult 
circumstances. ..." 

That monologue of Witte's, as he stood beside me on the 
captain's bridge, made a deep impression on me. I wrote it 
down and had it typed by my secretar>', and I told Witte 



348 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that he would do well to bring forward these ideas of his 
from time to time in his public utterances. *1 am afraid," 
he objected, "they would do more harm than good. Being 
too early is as harmful as being too late. Everything has its 
season. People do not take the time to reflect, they most 
often label a man erroneously. Your people in England, for 
example, regard me as anti-English. And that is wholly 
false.'* I said that perhaps a few might be under this wrong 
impression, but only a few. He answered, "Only the few 
that matter. I know for certain that all the crowned heads 
who are relatives or friends of the Tsar have been assured 
by him that I am a man not to he trusted. Those are the exact 
words used by him and repeated by them. In England they 
have been amplified and I am set down as a friend to Germany 
and an enemy to your country. That is false, as you know. 
You and I may and do differ in our ideas about the way to 
reconstruct Europe, socially and politically, but we are at 
one as to the final aim. And you have never taken me for 
an enemy to the British people. You often say that I am 
mistaken in my judgment of British policy. And you are 
probably right. But I greatly admire English ideas and 
methods. What I want, however, is to solve a certain prob- 
lem practically. And my way of doing it is by grouping the 
great powers of the Continent together. The most difficult 
aspect of it is to obtain the adhesion of France. This could 
be effected if Germany were wise even to the extent of 
discerning her own interests and behaving in the political 
domain as a farmer does in the agricultural. When he drops 
the seed into the earth he resigns himself to see nothing 
more of it for a season. And he reaps the harvest in the 
fulness of time. If I were in the Kaiser's place, it is not the 
question of Alsace and Lorraine that would keep me from 
knitting Europe into a federal State. And yet I am not 
blind to the difficulties in the way." 

Once or twice again during our absence from Europe 
Witte reverted to this theme, and then it faded from my 
vision until after our return. When we were on our way 
home and nearing Portsmouth I renewed the request I had 



THE SECRET TREATY 349 

often made to him that he would land in England and make 
himself acquainted with persons and institutions there/ 
especially as he would probably be entrusted with the 
government of Russia and could not but profit by a personal 
knowledge of the country and the people with whom the 
Tsar's ministers would of necessity have to come into fre- 
quent contact. He agreed with my proposal in the abstract, 
but regretted that for purely formal reasons it could not be 
carried out. Despatched by the Emperor on a special mission 
it was, he said, his duty, having performed it, to go straight 
back to Russia and report to his sovereign. Only the Tsar 
could dispense him from that duty, and he himself could 
not fitly ask for a dispensation. He promised, however, to 
visit England with me later if the internal condition of 
Russia, which disquieted him greatly, left him free to do so. 

At Portsmouth I took leave of Witte who continued his 
journey to France. What he saw, heard, and undertook to 
do there, and the nature of the services which he rendered 
to the republic, will one day be confided in detail to the 
historian. On learning Witte's attitude in all these and 
kindred transactions, and the zeal with which he always 
threw himself into the service of France, the reader will be 
inclined to admit that some of the cut-and-dried stock labels 
which had been hastily afiixed to the one statesman Russia 
has possessed since Peter the Great are but tokens of the 
ignorance and incompetence of those who employ them. 
Witte was above all things else a Russian and one of the 
nation's most perfect types. 

Returning to the origins of the secret treaty and the 
curious way in which it came to light, I shall endeavour to 
reproduce the story as far as possible in Witte's own words.^ 

'Later on I repeated the supRestion and once 1 was on tlie point of suc- 
ceeding, I wrote to friends in I^ngland, some of wht)m kindly promised 
to entertain him, hut one of them — the one from wliom I had expected 
most — showed symptoms of hesitation, and the matter dropped. 

' I possess everything in writing, hnt not every dcKument is actually 
accessihle to me now. I kept them in safe places during my travels, and 
I could not always lay my hands on them at a moments notice. It is a 
remarkable fart that a few years later Witte's memory played him false 
in certain malttrs with which he was never really conversant. I have 



350 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

His success at Portsmouth (U.S.A.) had made his name 
famous throughout the world. Every country was anxious 
to have him as its guest, and every cabinet desirous of win- 
ning his friendship. But as usual the British Foreign Office, 
true to its hallowed traditions, approached him along the 
old diplomatic road which he cordially detested. The 
cabinet knew that I was Witte's intimate friend and adviser, 
that it was I whom he chose to open negotiations with Japan, 
and later on to request King Edward to visit the Tsar at 
Reval or elsewhere, and to help him in all his undertakings, 
home and foreign, but never once did they apply to me for 
any assistance or advice. Over and over again I listened 
with pain to his severe and merited strictures called forth 
by some of their ill-advised acts, but I did not venture to 
tread on ground that was holy.^ 

"At Portsmouth,'* Witte said, as soon as I rejoined 
him in Petersburg, "I received two invitations which 
I deeply appreciated One tended towards the fulfil- 
ment of your wish that I should disembark in England, 
repair to London, and see your men of light and leading. 
It was issued on behalf of King Edward and was presented 
by that sovereign's friend, the Councillor of the Russian 
Embassy in London, Poklevsky-Kozel.^ This diplomatist 
also brought a series of proposals respecting a projected 
agreement between Russia and England which, he told me, 

some curious examples of this In one case I showed him published ac- 
counts of a political transaction in which he had played a prominent part 
— accounts incompatible with his own. He declined to accept them. I 
then told him an official statement had appeared which ran counter to his. 
He at once exclaimed : "Please write to my dictation a full account of 
what took place from start to finish." I did. But although correct in 
every other particular, it is absolutely wrong in that important one. His 
memory was at fault. 

*Once only I was requested by a diplomatist, who was a personal 
friend of mine, not by the Foreign Office, to induce the Russian govern- 
ment to appoint a certain individual to the post of minister plenipotentiary 
to a country where diplomatic disputes were frequent. I asked Witte to 
get Lamsdorff to appoint the man and he did so. If my friend had fore- 
seen what would come of it, he would not have made the request. He 
and the Russian diplomatist whom I had had sent as minister quarrelled 
hopelessly and the latter had to be recalled by M. Izvolsky. 

'A diplomatist of real worth whose career in Teheran and Bucharest 
was brilliant and useful. 



THE SECRET TREATY 351 

had the approval of the King and the Foreign Office. It 
dealt with the various countries in which the political 
interests of the two empires do not run parallel and with 
designs which are resented by one side and more or less 
sincerely repudiated by the other. In a word it was, or 
might have been, the practical outcome of your articles on 
the possibility of an accord between the two empires. 

*'I told Poklevsky that I felt highly honoured by the 
invitation which the King had so graciously sent me and 
deeply grieved that I could not avail myself of it, because 
being the State Secretary of the Tsar I am bound to go 
straight home, unless his Majesty ordains otherwise. Perhaps 
I may be fortunate enough to see England and her King at a 
later date. Thereupon Poklevsky asked me to read and to 
give him my opinion about the project of an accord between 
Russia and Great Britain which he laid before me. He said 
that I was the Premier designate of the new dispensation. 
I read it through very quickly. It reminded me of your 
own written and verbal proposals for an Entente, the part 
about Persia was, I believe, almost the same. It turned 
upon the East, Tibet, Persia, Afghanistan, and other 
places. Well, I had to tell Poklevsky what I had so often 
repeated to you alx)ut these plans. I said, *I am not a 
diplomatist, at least not a professional one, and my views 
will not help you. I had much rather you submitted the 
scheme to Count Lamsdorff. It is he who will have to 
report on the subject to the Tsar as soon as the question has 
ripened. Still, if you insist on my judgment, you are welcome 
to it. The provisions made here for removing the causes 
of friction between Russia and England are, I should say, 
most mcKlerate and do credit to their distinguished author. 
Personally I should be disposed to give Cireat lirilain consider- 
ably more than she demands in this paper, at any rale, when 
working out the details. I would certainly make larger con- 
cessions in Persia.* The English sense of measure is most 

•The same or similar languaKC was addressed io tJic Hritish ambassador 
by the Tsar's Minister of I'oreiKn Aflfairs, M. Izvolsky, when the scheim* 
finally came up for discussion. But the British government on behalf of 
the Indian government declined to take 41II that Russia was willing to oflfer. 



352 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

commendable. But I am opposed to alliances. Don't mis- 
interpret me. I am fond of England. The character, the 
temperament of that people appeal to me strongly perhaps 
by contrast with my own, and I am penetrated with the con- 
viction that the two nations must live and work in peace 
and amity. Those, therefore, who hallmark me as Anglophobe 
are maligners. It is false that I approve any design, any 
policy, calculated to cause friction between London and 
Petersburg. What is true is that I favour a different method 
from yours. That is all. But unhappily mischief-makers 
have built upon that fact the fiction that I am an enemy of 
Great Britain. 

" The truth is I have always pleaded for freedom from 
entanglements in our relations with foreign countries. In 
that we ought, I hold, to imitate the United States. On 
principle I would not bind our hands unless constrained by 
necessity. No close relations, no Entente for me, with any 
country whatever for the moment. Nothing piecemeal. 
Abstinence from patchwork alliances would strengthen 
Russia incalculably.^ I inculcated this principle on Alex- 
ander III. who told me that he endorsed every word I had 
said on the subject. And he made it an axiom of his policy. 
So, too, did Nicholas II. when he first ascended the throne. 
I know for a fact that the Kaiser let him understand that he 
would like a formal treaty, but the Tsar, mindful of his 
father's line of action, fought shy of it. And I hope he will 
continue faithful to this avoidance of complications. You 
may ask, if that be so, how I can uphold the alliance with 
France. My answer is, I did not make it. I found it ready- 
made. I will go further, however, and say that it was 
an historic necessity, just as our commercial treaty with 

This sounds incredible, but it is true. They might have had Ispahan in 
the British sphere of influence. I do not mention this refusal by way of 
reproach. What is, however, blameworthy is the fact that a couple of years 
after the convention was ratified, the British government asked for some 
of the things which it had rejected. And it received a refusal. . . . 

^ Witte, as I pointed out before, was always preoccupied lest his country 
should be drawn into war, because he realised how badly prepared it was 
and also how deep its fall after a defeat would be owing to the high 
position which it occupied in consequence of its unmerited prestige. 



THE SECRET TREATY 353 

Germany was a necessity. It had to be accepted. It had 
grown slowly until at last it forced itself upon the two 
peoples and took the form of a military convention. And 
now it is part of the foundation of the loose international 
State-system of Europe. Let it stand, therefore, as an un- 
questionable postulate. But let it be the only tie of the kind 
until Europe is transfigured. Even with France our relations 
are not what they might and should be. They are too casual, 
too little organic, not properly adjusted to the ends. That is 
a defect that I should like to see remedied. But the alliance 
with France was a necessity and for the time being no other 
alliance is. 

" Tlease assure King Edward that among Russian states- 
men in and outside the cabinet England has no more 
sincere friend than myself. For my country I desire a close 
and excellent working understanding with the British people, 
and I am certain we shall achieve that in the near future. 
But no political partnerships. I cannot second any effort to 
bring them about. On principle I will discountenance them 
all.' 

'That was the tenor of my answer. King Edward when 
he received it misunderstood it, as I feared he would. He 
did not believe in my friendly sentiments towards his 
country.'* 

Witte's notions on all these subjects were a mixture of 
genuine wisdom and childish simplicity. His want of 
knowledge about some aspects of international law, custom, 
and political intercourse was amazing, as were also the 
serenity and dogmatism with which he would discourse 
upon these as though he were perfectly familiar with them. 



CHAPTER XVIII 
The Secret Treaty Revealed 

WiTTE told me, as follows, the story of how he learned of 
the existence of the secret treaty and the means he devised 
for the purpose of invalidating it. 'T did not know, neither 
did I suspect, that the two monarchs had been treaty- 
making during my sojourn at Portsmouth. It is true that the 
Kaiser had made an allusion to something they had done, 
but he did not give me to understand that it was an alliance 
or any compact of international moment. The exact words 
he employed as they now come back to me were these: 
'I have a pleasant surprise for you. We — I mean your Tsar 
and I — have taken measures to realise this ideal of ours. If 
you are again put in charge of the government machine, are 
you prepared to lend us a helping hand towards making it 
a practical instrument of international politics?* 'Certainly, 
I am,' I replied. 'Good, very good,' he answered, *I am 
delighted. You will see exactly what is required of you 
when you are in power again — when you get back to Peters- 
burg — and then you will frame the measures you deem 
adequate. You know how high I rate your talents as a 
statesman.' 

"That was all. I confess I never once thought of a secret 
treaty between the Tsar and the Kaiser, and still less of an 
alliance against France and England. I could not imagine 
such a thing. 

*'0n my arrival in Russia, I received at Pskoff this tele- 
gram from the Tsar : 

"BjORKE, 15/A September, 1905. Midnight. 
" *To Secretary of State Witte, — I wish you welcome 
on your home-coming from Washington^ (sic) after having 
brilliantly carried out the mission of first-class State im- 
portance which I confided to you. I invite you to come to 
*Wc visited Washington only for a few hours, 
354 



THE TREATY REVEALED 355 

visit me here at Bjorke on the Yacht Polar Star on Friday. 
By my command the yacht Arrow will be sent and placed 
at your disposal. — Nikolai/ 

"Before going to Bjorke, as I had to pass through Peters- 
burg in any case, I made it my business to see Count 
Lamsdorff, as I did not know what might have happened 
while I was crossing the Atlantic. I am always in doubt as to 
what the Emperor may do when left to himself. It is his 
constant aspiration to be free to do as he pleases, and he hates 
being guided or counselled by those whose one function is to 
counsel him. So I saw the Minister of Foreign Affairs and 
had a long talk with him in the course of which we reviewed 
the recent past, domestic and foreign, surveyed the present, 
and glanced despondently at the future. I may tell you that 
I was full of the Morocco affair, highly pleased at the service 
I had rendered the French, and anxious that the best use 
should be made of the conditions I had thus helped to 
create. 

"We also talked of Portsmouth, Roosevelt, the Kaiser, 
of the formidable difficulties that would face us when the 
troops came home, of the Duma scheme, and kindred 
matters. But Lamsdorff never breathed a word to me about 
a secret treaty. Thus initiated into current affairs I set out 
for Bjorkesund. 

"The Tsar received me with that delightful affability of 
his which captivates not only all who meet him for the first 
time, but even many who, like myself, know the exact worth 
of his gestures and phrases. But when with me he can never 
entirely throw off a certain feeling of constraint which 
enwraps in an atmosphere of insincerity everything he says 
and does. After some desultory conversation which con- 
sisted on his part merely of disconnected questions and on 
mine of descriptions and comments, he casually turned the 
conversational stream on to Rominten. 'And how did you 
find the Kaiser?* I described Wilhelm's chann of manner 
and how confused I should have felt if I had not attributed 
his exuberant cordiality to the circumstance that I rcpre- 



356 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



■ 



sented the Tsar. 'Did he say anything to you about work- 
ing for a stable peace in Europe?' 'Yes, sire. He never 
omits that topic from his conversations with me.' 'Did he 
ask you for your views about his scheme?' 'He knew what 
my views had been and he asked me whether they were the 
same. I said they were and he expressed his satisfaction.' 
'I understand that you approve our having taken the matter 
up, he and I?' 'Yes, sire, fully. The aim appeals to me 
powerfully. I unfolded it myself to the Kaiser many years 
ago.' 'I am delighted. For it has long been my aim too, 
but there were always difficulties in the way. Happily we 
managed to make a good beginning and I am delighted that 
it has your approval. Did the Kaiser explain to you in what 
the measures consisted that he and I had taken?' 'No, sire, 
he merely mentioned the fact, intimating that on my arrival 
in Petersburg they would be communicated to me.' 'So you 
did not see the document?' 'None, sire.' 'Hm. You shall 
see it.' 

"That was all.^ The next day it was Lamsdorff's turn to 
go to Bjorkesund. The Tsar, as I afterwards learned, told 
him that he and I had exchanged views on the subject of the 
treaty — ^with which Lamsdorff himself was now acquainted 
— and that I had expressed my satisfaction with the aim and 
the means of attaining it. Lamsdorff, who, like a typical 
diplomatist, spoke without emotion or even accent, asked 
what I had said. You know Lamsdorff, and how calmly he 
takes things. He needed time to realise the statement that 
I approved a most momentous State document, which 
reversed the policy of the Empire and was drafted and signed 
by the Tsar without the knowledge of his Secretary for 
Foreign Affairs, and would bring Russia into universal 
odium. It was a repetition of the Kiao Chow business with 
this aggravating difference, that the issues were incom- 
parably more far-reaching. And yet I had brandmarked the 

* My historical sense obliges me to state that I possess several versions 
of this story narrated at various times between the years 1905-1914 by 
Witte himself, and that they are, as one would expect, divergent in 
secondary details. They all agree, however, in the essential point that 
Witte did not know of the treaty before September. 




THE TREATY REVEALED 357 

one and praised the other. But Lamsdorff, as you know, is a 
mild-mannered man who has his own theory of the role a 
minister should play in the autocracy. And his theory dove- 
tails with the system — there is no doubt about that — but is 
incompatible with the spirit of the age and with the further 
life and prosperity of the Empire. So he once more gave 
gentle expression to his views on the subject, without a word 
or a tone indicative of undue emotion. He uttered his appre- 
hension that the alliance concluded by the Tsar could not 
stand, because if it did the Franco-Russian alliance would be 
abrogated ipso facto. The Emperor made some feeble reply 
to screen the position which he really took up and which was 
that the treaty was signed, the alliance concluded, and that 
what he had done could not be undone now. Some other 
solution must therefore be thought out. 

"Lamsdorff on his return from Bjorke saw me. I was 
never more surprised than by his manner towards me, his 
intimate friend. His coolness was deliberate and marked. 
He was as reserved as a diplomatic adversary and dry, almost 
cutting, in his talk. To begin with he addressed me by my 
brand new title of count. I felt nettled. I could not guess 
what had happened to bring about this change. But before 
I could articulate a question, he put one to me. 'Is it a 
fact, count — I suppose it must be seeing that his Majesty 
affirms it — that you approve of the transaction he concluded 
with the Kaiser the other day at Bjorke?' 'Yes, so far as 
I know it. That has always been my policy — Europe must 
be united somehow or else it will go to pieces politically and 
socially. We must get rid of wars, at least on this continent, 
and not by unworthy mystifications like the Hague Con- 
ference, but by efficacious measures, otherwise the United 
States of America to-morrow, and perhaps ;\siatic States 
the day after to-morrow, will beat Europe economically and 
therefore militarily as well. Once Russia. France, and Ger- 
many are united . . .' LamsdorfT stopj)cd me, repeating, 
'France? What are you talking about? Have we read the 
same treaty or different ones?' I answered, 'I have seen 
no treaty. I have only heard from each of the two Emperors 



358 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that they have taken a stride towards realising my concep- 
tion of a feasible association of all European nations for the 
purposes of peaceful economic development and mutual 
protection.* 'Your conception? With France left out? 
Did you read the treaty?' *No. What treaty?' *Here, 
please read the treaty and see what it is that you applaud.' 
And removing the document from his drawer he handed it 
to me. I took out my spectacles and perused it. I felt a 
heaviness at the pit of my stomach. I could hardly realise 
what the words implied." Here Witte described the treaty 
to me, to the best of his recollection. It was not until later 
that I received a copy of it.^ Then he went on : 

"Now Lamsdorff and I were back on common ground. 
I was furious, and I showed it. Even he, although always 
collected and deliberate, displayed unmistakable symptoms 
of indignation. I said, 'That was a low trick for the Kaiser 
to play, and what are we to think of the destinies of an 
Empire which can be duped in that barefaced way and led 
to the brink of the abyss?' Tt is a very unfortunate affair,' 
Lamsdorff remarked. If I had known about it, I would 
have stopped it at the first inception. But everything was 
done without my knowledge.' 'Well, it must be undone 
now,' said I. 'It will lower us all in the eyes of France, for 
it is irreconcilable with our treaty obligations to the republic,' 
Lamsdorff went on. 'It is worse,' I added. 'It is a piece 
of base perfidy on Russia's part — for Russia is unfortunately 
compromised.' We then discussed the ways and means of 
upsetting the treaty. This was no easy matter because of 
the stand taken by the Tsar, who was prompted by the 
Kaiser. He maintained that what is done is done and cannot 
be recalled or abrogated; that the secret treaty did not run 
counter to the Franco-Russian covenants, unless these were 
offensive, and therefore pointed against Germany; and that 
France should be treated not so much in accordance with 
those covenants as congruously with her deserts, and that 
she had behaved abominably towards Russia and Germany. 
In this connection it is interesting to read a telegram from 

* See p. 412. 



THE TREATY REVEALED 359 

his ever ready prompter who, having received a communica- 
tion containing the Tsar's scruples or misgivings, wrote in 
a temper : 

" *The working of the treaty does not — as we agreed at 
Bjorke — collide with the Franco-Russian alliance — pro- 
vided, of course, the latter is not aimed directly at my 
country. On the other hand the obligations of Russia 
towards France can only go so far as France merits that 
through her behaviour. Your ally has notoriously left you 
in the lurch during the whole war, whereas Germany helped 
you in every way as far as it could without infringing the 
laws of neutrality. That puts Russia morally also under 
obligations to us; do ut des. Meanwhile the indiscretions 
of Delcasse ^ have shown the world that though France is 
your ally she nevertheless made an agreement with England, 
and was on the very verge of surprising Germany with 
British help in the middle of peace, while I was doing my 
best to you and your country her ally. This is an experiment 
which she must not repeat again, and against a repetition of 
which I must expect you to guard me. I fully agree with 
you that it will cost time, labour, and patience to induce 
France to join us both, but the reasonable people will, in 
future, make themselves heard and felt! Our Morocco 
business is regulated to entire satisfaction, so that the air is 
free for better understanding between us. Our treaty is a 
very good base to build upon. We joined hands and signed 
before God who heard our vows.^ I therefore think that the 
treaty can well come into existence. 

** 'But if you wish any changes in the words or clauses 
or provisions for the future or different emergencies — as, for 
instance, the absolute refusal of France, which is improbable 
— I gladly await any proposals you will think fit to lay before 
me! Till these have been laid l)efore me and agreed upon, 
the treaty must be adhered to by us as it is. The whole of 

*This refers to the statements in the press that M. Delcass6 when 
Minister of I-'oreign Aflfairs had ohtiiined I^nj^'land's promise that she would 
land a contingent of troops on the Continent if Cicrmany went to war 
against France. 

'lie would appear to have been deaf to the vows of France and Russia. 



360 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

your influential press, Nowosti, Nowoie Wremja, Rtissj, etc., 
have, since a fortnight, become violently anti-Germans and 
pro-British. Partly they are bought by heavy sums of British 
money, no doubt. Still it makes my people very chary and 
does great harm to the relations newly growing between our 
countries. All these occurrences show that times are 
troubled, and that we must have clear courses to steer; the 
treaty we signed is a means of keeping straight without 
interfering with your alliance as such. What is signed is 
signed! and God is our testator! I shall await your pro- 
posals. Best love to Alex. Willy.' ^ 

"It was a delicate and unenviable task to argue the matter 
with the Tsar on those lines. Lamsdorff was too milk-and- 
watery to succeed. He conceived his function to be that of 
a monitor, or say rather an oracle that uttered the forecast 
but took no thought of the action of those who demanded it. 
With me he was explicit enough. He said that the first 
clause obliged Russia to take up arms against her own ally 
France as well as against England in case of war between 
either of these countries and Germany. What a schoolboy 
ought to have perceived was that Russia would never be 
assailed by either France or England. That was as clear as 
the noonday sun. All that remained, therefore, of the 
eventualities, to provide for which the compact was struck 
up, was the case of hostilities breaking out between France 
or England and Germany. Consequently it was a one-sided 
bargain, of use only to the German Empire. It would bind 
Russia's hands leaving those of Germany free. Then again 
it was a piece of revolting disloyalty to France, to whom we 
were pledged. How could we redeem the two pledges, stand 
by France against Germany and stand by Germany against 
France? The thing was preposterous. Yet there it was in 
black and white, the handiwork of the Kaiser whose respect 
for this piece of paper would have been touching were it not 
disgustingly hypocritical. To have induced the Tsar to put 
his name to this degrading deed was an insult to all Russia. 
I could hardly express myself within conventional limits. 

*See Confidential Despatch, dated Glucksburg, 29th September. 



THE TREATY REVEALED 361 

The conversation between Lamsdorff and myself ended by 
our resolving to leave no stone unturned in order to invalidate 
or nullify the pact. 

"Heaven only knows what we should have done if we 
had not been actively helped by the Grand Duke Nikolai 
Nikolayevitch, who was easily convinced of the seriousness 
of the position and the necessity of clearing it up. It is my 
conviction that neither Lamsdorff nor myself would have 
succeeded in moving the Tsar had we not had the co-opera- 
tion of the Grand Duke. For when pressed hard by our 
arguments the Emperor always managed to slip away on a 
side issue. For example, he said, *The contingency which 
would, you say, oblige us to fight against France is so remote 
and improbable as not to come into consideration.' In 
truth he refused to be convinced or overruled. Now it 
was gall and wormwood to the Emperor to be obliged to 
acknowledge as true something which he had denied as false, 
or to accept as motive or aim what he had rejected as un- 
reasonable or undesirable. On these points he was morbidly 
touchy. And in this case I could see that he was relying on 
his power as Emperor ; stct pro ratione voluntas. That is where 
the co-operation of the Grand Duke came in so appositely. 

"The most important exchange of views on the subject 
occurred a couple of days after the first conversation. The 
place was the Imperial Palace of Peterhof. Present were 
the Tsar, the Grand Duke Nicholas, Lamsdorff, and myself. 
Lamsdorff was sulky and at first silent, afterwards he spoke 
in his usual courtly way, wrapping up hard truths in soft 
phraseology. What he actually said was that if it pleased 
his Majesty the treaty would hold good. He was the sove- 
reign and it was for him to decide. Certain formalities were 
all that need be observed. For instance, all pretext should be 
removed for saying that the treaty annuls the alliance with 
France and the accords underlying this. If the Emperor had 
had these accords under his eye at the time he would, of 
course, have avoided even appearances that might lend ct^lour 
to such criticism. At present it was a task for the minister 
of Foreign Affairs, who would have to bring the two deeds 



362 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 



^ 



into harmony, and the way to effect this would be to obtain 
the assent of the French to the new arrangement.^ One 
would have to reckon with unwillingness on the part of the 
French, but one could argue the matter, and if they were 
obdurate, Russia would at least be acting fairly and squarely. 
"But it was I who did most of the talking, and I uttered 
what I thought and called things by their usual names. I 
said, 'It is open to your Majesty to do much that none of 
your subjects may attempt. You may even stop the hands 
of the clock of time for a brief while. You can denounce 
existing treaties. You can make alliances and unmake them. 
But there is one thing which even the Tsar of all the Russias 
may not do, and I may add would never wish to do, and that 
is to play your friends false. Your Majesty is incapable of 
an act of baseness. It is not in you to break a solemn promise 
which was binding on the entire Empire. Well, that is what 
the secret treaty makes you do. Of course, your Majesty 
was unaware of this. But none the less that document, if 
allowed to stand, would make you a party to a deed which 
no self-respecting individual anywhere could defend, much 
less approve. It would discredit Russia in the eyes of the 
world. And for that reason it cannot be upheld. It is im- 
possible for your Majesty sincerely to promise to defend 
France against Germany and at the same time sincerely to 
promise to defend Germany against France.' The Tsar, 
who had already said in reply to Lamsdorff that he would 
never consent to have the French government consulted on 
the subject, was obviously angry with me, but did not reply. 
The Grand Duke, however, spoke up and said he endorsed 
Lamsdorff's judgment and mine. But he proposed — I am not 
sure whether it was he or Lamsdorff — that instead of com- 
municating with the French cabinet it might be well to try 
whether sufficient pressure could be brought to bear on the 

* It has been affirmed that the Russian ambassador in Paris, Nelidoff, too, 
was sounded on this subject and had banished any hope that the Tsar or the 
Kaiser might have cherished. This was wholly superfluous. Rouvier, who was 
perhaps the most venturesome minister of the republic at that time and had 
joined hands with Delcasse's Teuton adversaries, had, as we saw, declared 
that he had rather keep out of a triple alliance of Germany, France, and 
Russia. 



THE TREATY REVEALED 363 

German Foreign Office to get the deed annulled. Anyhow 
I know that it was the Grand Duke who helped us materially, 
and practically at last broke the Tsar's resolve to maintain 
the treaty in vigour. When we left the Peterhof Palace the 
only problem that faced us was one of ways and means. 
But even that was puzzling. 

"The next move was made by Lamsdorff who had repre- 
sentations made to the German Foreign Office to the effect 
that the accord having been arranged in the absence of the 
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, and at a moment when 
the Tsar had not access to the documents defining the 
obligations of the Empire towards the other powers affected, 
it lacked some of the essential elements that impart to such 
treaties their binding force, and that the Russian minister 
having now taken cognisance of the document and reported 
to the Tsar has been commanded by him to adopt the need- 
ful steps to have the treaty annulled. Would the German 
Foreign Office take cognisance of this? 

"The reply that came from Berlin was characteristic. The 
conclusion was the same as that of the last telegram of the 
Kaiser to the Tsar. The document in question, it was 
argued, had been duly signed by the Emperors. It was they 
who had negotiated it. Therefore any question respecting 
it was a matter which they must themselves discuss and 
settle. Their respective Foreign Secretaries were incompe- 
tent to deal with it. This uncompromising attitude rendered 
it incumbent on Lamsdorff and myself to think of the 
alternative and arrange to have the facts disclosed to the 
French government. But we were alarmed at the conse- 
quences. France would not look upon the act of treason — 
for it was nothing less — with indifference and indulgence, 
and Russia's moral credit would vanish. We were at our 
wits' end when a chance word suggested a key to the solu- 
tion. I was saying to Lamsdorff, 'It is all the more 
disgusting on the part of the Kaiser that it was he who 
pushed Russia into the war with Japan, and now it is he 
who is preventing us from establishing peace in Europe.' 
Those words reminded Lamsdorff of the tliird clause of the 



364 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

secret treaty and suggested to him the idea of making that 
the lever of our action. It runs: 'The present treaty 
receives binding force at the moment of the conchision of 
peace between Russia and Japan.' Lamsdorff had it pointed 
out to the Gennan Foreign Office that if they persisted in 
their uncompromising attitude and decHned to agree to the 
abrogating of the secret treaty, Russia, in order to escape 
its provisions, v^ould feel bound to postpone the conclusion 
of peace with Japan and would decline responsibility for 
the consequences. 

"Then, and only then, did the answer come acquiescing 
in Lamsdorff's request to annul the secret treaty. It came 
dished up after the manner of diplomatic notes, and set 
forth that the Tsar had no access at the time when he signed 
the treaty to the requisite documents, and therefore was not 
aware that the terms of the compact ran counter to those of 
the Franco-Russian Alliance. 

"I want to draw your attention to one interesting point 
in this discussion: Lamsdorff's request to the German 
Foreign Office was not for the annulation pure and simple 
of the treaty. Convinced by me long before that a European 
association, call it as you like, would form the most stable 
basis for the peace of Europe, he favoured my scheme which 
would have embodied this conception. What he demurred 
to was the form given to it by the Kaiser — a form which left 
France out and impregnated Russia's relations towards her 
with a deadly hostile spirit. In his demand, Lamsdorff asked 
that the pristine idea be kept in view and proposals be made 
for embodying it in a treaty which would be free from the 
objections that proved fatal to this one. France must be 
consulted from the outset of the negotiations. But to this 
proposal the Berlin Foreign Office returned no reply. 

"This victory of ours over Wilhelm II. brought down 
upon us his fierce hate. Nothing was left undone to oust 
Lamsdorff from the Foreign Office. The Kaiser repre- 
sented him as the ame damnce of Witte. At Copenhagen 
Izvolsky had caught the Kaiser's eye and found favour in his 
sight. The long talk they had had there about the attitude 



THE TREATY REVEALED 365 

of the Danes towards an eventual violation of that country's 
neutrality in case of war had impressed him favourably, 
and he was very desirous of having Izvolsky sent as am- 
bassador to BerHn to represent the Tsar, just as he was also 
very desirous of having Sir Arthur Nicolson appointed 
ambassador to represent Great Britain in Berlin. 

"From his correspondence with Nicholas II. the Kaiser 
learned the part that I had played in getting the secret 
treaty annulled. But he made one mistake: he attributed 
my action to my partiality for England. He thought that 
you had converted me into a champion of Britain. I learned 
this from Mendelssohn who visited me here ^ and told me so. 
Mendelssohn added that he had done what was possible to set 
the Emperor right and to make it clear to him that my attitude 
was free from duplicity, that I am not for an alliance or en- 
tente with England, and that I am not an enemy to Germany. 
But notwithstanding Mendelssohn's defence, the Kaiser's dis- 
like persisted and he intrigued with your friend Schwanebach 
against me. You know how and with what results. 

"When I was floating the biggest loan on record in April 
of the ensuing year, at the most critical moment, the Kaiser 
induced Mendelssohn to withdraw so that the success of the 
operation was temporarily imperilled. You were with me 
at the time and you remember how keenly I felt the blow, 
which I traced unhesitatingly to the man who had dealt it. 

"As you are aware I had to quit office as soon as the loan 
was floated. But even without Wilhclm's intrigues I should 
have retired. Lamsdorff, my friend, wanted to leave too on 
principle, and he actually wrote a petition asking the 
Emperor's permission to resign. I besought him not to send 
it. He complied with my recjuest, and now note the cunning 
of Nicholas IF., who was anxious that he .should tender his 
resignation. When I was bidding good-bye to the Tsar and 
receiving his thanks for the loan he suddenly turned to nic 
and said in his sweetest tones, *Tell me, count, will you 
grant me another favour?' 'Most certainly, your Majesty. 

* At Biarriu. 



366 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

You have only to command/ Will you serve me as am- 
bassador?' 'With the utmost pleasure, sire, but I should 
not like to have to travel very far from Russia.* *0h, it won't 
be far. You v^ill be accredited to a great power in Europe. 
But tell me, will you object to go on the score that your 
chief, the Foreign Secretary, is a younger man than yourself ?' 
'No, sire, not at all. Besides, Count Lamsdorff is not so 
much younger than I am.* 'Oh, I don't mean Count Lams- 
dorff, but another and a younger man.' I took the hint, 
went at once to Lamsdorff and reported the conversation to 
him, for I well knew that it had been arranged for that very 
purpose. And the whole transaction was devised by the 
Kaiser who wanted Izvolsky at the Foreign Office. I then 
told Lamsdorff to send in his resignation, which he did. 

"In the meanwhile I made inquiries as to what had gone 
before the actual drafting and signing of the document. I 
like to have a clear and complete picture of such historic 
events in my mind'e eye. I talked to several persons who, I 
thought, might throw some light on the subject, and 
gradually I pieced their accounts together and reconstituted 
the scene. What I suspected was confirmed: that there 
had been a long correspondence by messengers and by 
telegraph between the two monarchs, and that their meet- 
ing had been settled in that way with the utmost secrecy. 
Nobody was told of it, not even I who had seen and talked 
at considerable length with the Tsar before my departure 
for America, and who ought to have been primed with 
information about such matters. He never breathed a word 
of what he was meditating. 

"When the two monarchs met and decided to sign the 
treaty the Kaiser desired to have it countersigned. The 
Tsar who wanted to crown his secret negotiations in a 
conspirative way did not see the object of this caution and 
said so. But Wilhelm with his business instincts insisted — 
'for the sake of the form,' he pleaded. Nicholas II. was put 
out by this because he disliked confiding State affairs of this 
nature to any one. He is possessed by a mania for secrecy. 
But he allowed himself to be overruled by his confederate. 



THE TREATY REVEALED 367 

Then he called up Admiral Birileff and spoke to him on the 
subject. These and other details I hold from Birileff him- 
self. And when I upbraided him with having been a party 
to an unqualified and unpatriotic act, he defended himself 
saying that if I had been in his place I would have done the 
same thing, and that he himself would do it again under like 
conditions. 'Could I,' he asked, 'refuse the Emperor who, 
looking embarrassed and dejected, made a touching appeal 
to my loyalty and devotion and asked me to help him out of 
a difficulty?' Birileff gave me his word of honour that he 
never read nor saw a line of the document he was signing, 
ajid that he did not know it was a treaty with Germany, 
although if he had known it he would have signed it all the 
same. The Tsar had begun by asking him, 'Do you trust 
me?' and he answered, 'Absolutely.' 'If I were to ask 
you to sign a document without reading it, or with your 
eyes closed, would you do it?' 'Unhesitatingly, sire.' 'I 
knew you would. Well now, look. Here is a paper which I 
want you to sign in that way.' 'And the Emperor left un- 
covered only the space where I was to write my name. I at 
once took the pen and affixed my signature.' " 

Witte never wholly relinquished his ideal of a federation 
or sodality of European States, nor the hope that through 
his agency and that of a few kindred spirits throughout the 
world it might be brought perceptibly nearer to its high 
consummation. The present ordering of human society 
with its huge frauds, its vileness and pettiness, and the in- 
calculable sufferings thus wantonly inflicted upon mortals 
who might be rendered content, kindled his indignation 
and a degree of energy for which there was no scope. He 
often longed for die post of ambassador in Paris and, as 
already stated, the hope was fed by the Tsar — for a strange 
personal purpose while Witte's object was to work for the 
achievement of his cherished aim. The unbroken sequence 
of successes that had crowned his efforts in every depart- 
ment of public life to which he set his hand encouraged him 
to think that with him opportunity would always be attended 
by success. Once installed in the Paris Embassy he would 



368 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

be able to inaugurate the grandiose work of European 
reconstruction. The Tsar on his side was equally resolute, 
not only to take into his own hands the direction of the 
important public affairs which interested him, but to do this 
as often as possible surreptitiously. Conspirative bargaining 
and clandestine machinations which clashed with the 
official obligations of his government had a fascination for 
him which he could with difficulty resist. 

Nicholas II. had occasionally sought to win over his 
Foreign Secretaries to his own petty political patchwork, 
but since Lamsdorff's dismissal he had met with no success. 
During the negotiations for the convention with Great 
Britain, for example — a convention conceived on generous 
lines as a wiping out of all old scores with a view to a settled 
friendship — he would insist on giving Russia a frontier 
bordering on Afghanistan. This idea had been engrafted 
on his mind by the Kaiser in conversation and in letters. 
Evidences of the insidious untruths by which it was fed 
are found in the Willy-Nicky telegrams.^ It was exceed- 
ingly difficult for M. Izvolsky to hold his own against the 
pressure put on him by the Emperor in this direction. 
But the minister refused to budge and the monarch ended 
by allowing him and the British government to have 
their way. 

In the year 19 lo, when visiting the German Kaiser at 
Potsdam, Nicholas II. found another opportunity for 
modifying international politics off his own bat, and he 
utilised it to the full. In spite of the circumstance that he 
was accompanied by his Minister for Foreign Affairs,^ while 
the Kaiser was surrounded with advisers like Bethmann- 
Hollweg and Kiderlen-Wachter, Wilhelm II. contrived to 
have a quiet after-dinner talk with his guest out of the hear- 
ing of any third person. And he made the most of it. In 
essentials the official agreement which the two governments 
signed ^ was the same that M. Izvolsky had found it necessary 
to draft after the convention with Britain, because the 

*See Appendix. 'M. Sazonoff. 

'Agreement of the 19th August, 191 1. 



THE TREATY REVEALED 369 

German government refused to be bound by that convention. 
But there was a difference. 

The Kaiser's ministers had long been asking Russia to 
undertake to connect Persia from Khanekin with the Baghdad 
railway by a branch line, but M. Izvolsky, when he was 
Foreign Secretary, and M. Sazonoff who succeeded him, 
refused. Their tactics were to wait until something happened 
to enable them to get Germany to withdraw her claim or 
to accept compensation elsewhere. But this plan was upset 
by the Tsar who, unknown to his minister, acquiesced in the 
Kaiser's demand. 

On this same occasion, and it may well be during the same 
confidential "exchange of ideas," a more fateful covenant 
would appear, from accounts published ^ since the Tsar's 
abdication, to have been agreed to by the imperial host and 
guest, the upshot of which was to authorise Germany to 
send General Liman von Sanders to Constantinople at the 
head of a military mission. This was one of the Kaiser's 
moves preliminary to the European war, and the Russian 
Premier construed it as such. 

On this occasion the Kaiser's method of approaching the 
Tsar was in the style of his opening to the conversation 
which had culminated years before in the accord about 
Kiao Chow. He stated that he had been requested by the 
Porte to lend an army instructor to Turkey, and that he pro- 
posed sending General Liman von Sanders to discharge the 
functions if the Tsar had nothing to urge against that. And 
Nicholas II., proud to be asked to decide such questions 
which hardly concerned him, answered that he saw no 
reason why he should demur. Thereupon the Kaiser, mind- 
ful of former experiences, expressed a wish to have this 
assent in black and white, and a document embodying it was 
duly signed. 

The Russian ministers had no inkhng of what their 
imperial master had done. He seems to have informed 
none of them. Both the Premier and the Minister of Foreign 
Affairs were justly alarmed when they learned that Germany 

* By the influential and widely circulated Moscow journal, Russkoye Stovo. 



370 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

had sent a military mission to Turkey under General Liman 
von Sanders, who had become commander of the Constanti- 
nople army corps, and therefore the Kaiser's military 
lieutenant in Turkey. They did the little that seemed 
feasible at the moment in order to have the appointment 
cancelled, but in vain. Among other steps they requested 
me to advocate publicly and privately the recall of the naval 
instructor sent to Turkey by the British government in the 
hope that the Kaiser would follow suit and withdraw Liman 
von Sanders. As I had strong reasons for not sharing this 
hope, I declined to comply with the request. After the lapse 
of some time, the Russian Premier ^ when passing through 
Berlin was asked by the Kaiser why they had made such a 
fuss in Petersburg about the German military mission under 
von Sanders, and to the Russian's amazement he invoked 
the Tsar's written assent. Seeing how surprised the Premier 
looked, Wilhelm II. showed him the document. The 
resourceful Russian having read it said, "Yes, but the 
Tsar's acquiescence had for its object only the appointment 
of General von Sanders as military instructor, not as com- 
mander of Turkish army corps." **But that is only a mere 
bagatelle," retorted the Kaiser. "Why so much ado about 
that?" 

On his return to Petersburg the Premier informed the 
Minister of Foreign Affairs of what he had seen and heard 
in the German capital, and learned that this official had no 
cognisance of the document nor of the accord it registered. 
After that M. Kokofftseff wrote a report on the episode to the 
Tsar and mentioned the constructions he had improvised 
and put upon it. And Nicholas IL, seemingly unconscious 
of the incongruity of his own conduct, annotated the passage 
containing his minister's interpretation thus: "I think so, 
too!" 

* Kokoflftseff. 



CHAPTER XIX 
The Downfall of the Tsardom 

TsARisM, its own stock of vitality exhausted and with no 
outer sources to draw upon, languished and decayed rapidly. 
Time and its changes acted on the predatory State as potent 
solvents. Every stage in the forward progress of Europe was 
a new set-back or a fresh danger to the system. The growth 
of manufactures in neighbouring countries; the incipient 
industrialisation of Russia; the general rise in the standard 
of living; the spread of technical instruction; the improve- 
ment in educational methods and the corresponding sharpen- 
ing of commercial and industrial competition; the advance 
of social and political sciences; the softening of manners; 
the increase of tolerance; the corresponding religious move- 
ments in Russia; and that invisible undercurrent without a 
name, which is so often alluded to as the spirit of the age, all 
tended to isolate the Tsarist State, render it obnoxious to 
the European community, and accentuate the centrifugal 
tendencies of its component parts. The work of governing 
the 180,000,000 became more and more difficult, seeing that 
whatever orientation a minister or a cabinet might now give 
to his policy, the general result was invariably negative. 

If, for instance, a man took office who, like Pobiedonost- 
sefF, made a vigorous effort to surround the country with a 
Chinese wall in order to keep out the destructive tendencies 
of the west, he was vehemently decried not only by the press 
and the intelligentsia at home, but by all liberal and radical 
Europe* as well. If a narrow-minded bureaucrat like Count 
Dmitry Tolstoy strove to hinder the Jews from spreading 
cosmopolitanism and religious indifferentism among a people 
whose meagre sociability and slight traces of civic virtue 

* I, who was one of PobiedonostscfTs unsparing critics, recognised the 
man's honesty and the rigorous logic with which he conceived his aspect 
of the problem. 



7 

^72 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

were derived from ancient custom and Christianity, he and 
his government v^ere furiously attacked and discredited 
throughout the world. When Alexander III. suddenly cur- 
tailed certain religious privileges of the Baltic barons, the 
champions of advanced thought in Germany and also in 
England lifted up their voices against the Tsardom and all its 
works.^ If on the other hand the sails of the State-ship began 
to be filled by a liberal wind, as when Prince Sviatopolk 
Mirsky or Witte was the principal representative of the Tsar, 
the Jews, the Baltic Germans, the Poles, the Lithuanians, 
the Esthonians, the Letts, the Mohammedans, the Arme- 
nians, the Georgians, all, forthwith, raised their hands 
and started off in the direction of their several eclectic 
affinities, but invariably away from Tsarism, until the enter- 
prising minister put on the brake. If a spell of religious 
tolerance meant a further weakening of the autocrat's hold 
on the people, a spurt of persecution had a like effect. In a 
word, the rhythms of the multitudinous elements composing 
the Tsardom had become so jarring that there was no more 
hope of harmonising them. 

Nor was it only the diverse races, but also the social 
classes of one and the same race, whose fixed tendencies were 
opposed to those of the political system. Thus turning from 
the nationalities to the bulk of the Russian people — the 
agricultural population — one was struck with the circum- 
stance that it was mediaeval in its institutions, Asiatic in its 
strivings, and prehistoric in its conceptions of life. The 
peasants believed that the Japanese had won the Man- 
churian campaign by assuming the form of microbes, getting 
into the boots of the Russian soldiers, biting their legs, and 
bringing about their death. When there was an epidemic in 
a district they often killed the doctors "for poisoning the 
wells and spreading the disease." They still burn witches 
with delight, disinter the dead to lay a ghost, strip unfaithful 

*I was myself one of those who exposed the crying injustice of this 
coercive measure which compelled a man like Prince Barclay de Tolly to 
have his children brought up in the Orthodox Russian Church, to which 
he did not belong, because his wife was a member of it. 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 373 

wives stark naked, tie them to carts, and whip them through 
the village. It is fair, therefore, to say that the level of 
culture of the peasantry, in whose name Russia is now being 
ruined, is considerably lower than that of Western Europe. 
And when the only restraints that keep such a multitude in 
order are suddenly removed the consequences to the com- 
munity are bound to be catastrophic. The peasantry, like 
the intelligentsia, is wanting in the social sense that endows 
a race with cohesiveness, solidity, and political unity. 
Between the people and anarchism for generations there 
stood but the frail partition formed by its primitive ideas 
of God and the Tsar, and since the Manchurian campaign 
these were rapidly melting away. 

Wholly indifferent to politics, of which they understood 
nothing, but cunning withal and land greedy, the peasants 
were only a long row of ciphers to which the articulate class, 
mainly officialdom, lent significance. All that they wanted 
was land, how it was obtained being a matter of no moment 
to them. Their view of property was that their own posses- 
sions were inviolable, whereas those of the actual owners 
should be wrested from them without more ado. This 
simplicist socialism was the crystallisation of ages of igno- 
rance, thraldom, and misguidance. It was manifest that the 
complete enfranchisement of these elements would necessarily 
entail the dissolution of the Tsardom. 

This situation and what it portended were plain to me 
at the time, and I strove perseveringly and unavailingly to 
make them equally clear to the nations and governments 
interested in Russia's well-being. My oft-repeated estimate 
of the forces that were making for the speedy disruption of 
the Tsardom has been borne out by events which are even 
now modifying the cour.se of the world's history. Klcvcn 
years ago I wrote : *The agrarian question in Russia is the 
alpha and omega of the revolution. It furnishes the lever 
by means of which the ancient regime, despite the support 
of the army, may be heaved into the limbo of things that 
were and are not. So important is the land prol^lem that if 
it could be definitely suppressed or satisfactorily solved tlic 



374 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

revolution would be a tame affair indeed, hardly as exciting 
as was that of one of the petty German States in the last 
century. In this case it still might be possible to a clever 
statesman, after and despite all that has taken place in Russia 
since October last,^ to prop up the bureaucratic system and 
renew its lease of life for another generation. For it must 
not be forgotten that fully 80 per cent, of the population are 
illiterate, and that millions of them are plunged in such 
benighted ignorance and crass superstition as foreigners can 
hardly conceive of. Hence they sorely need guidance. . . .^ 
The cry, *the land for the peasants,' intoxicates, nay, 
maddens them. They are then ready to commit any crime 
against property and life in the hope of realising their object. 
The explosive force that may be thus called into being and 
utilised for the purpose of overthrowing the present social 
and political order is enormous. The formidable army of 
the Tsar dwindles into nothing when compared to it, because 
itself is the source of the army to which it imparts its own 
strivings and tendencies/* ' 

The intelligentsia, whose ideas about human society were 
streaked with opinions borrowed from various countries 
and left unharmonised, partook of the characteristic traits 
both of the people and of the progressive nationalities. Com- 
posed chiefly of theory-mongers who had no roots in the 
country and who carried on a continuous anti-monarchist and 
communistic or nihilist propaganda in schools and elsewhere, 
it was perhaps the most corrosive solvent of all. 

To my thinking, then, there was no sovereign remedy for 
the malady from which the Tsardom was suffering. It was 
mortal, and the utmost that could be aimed at was to post- 
pone its effects for a few years. And even this would require 
higher statesmanship than the Emperor was employing. 
Already in February, 1905, I wrote of the incipient revolu- 
tion: "What the least observant can hardly fail to note is 
that there is no longer a head shaping and directing the 
course of events in the Tsardom. Certain forces are felt, 
certain things happen, the entire people drifts. Old and new 
*I90S. * Contemporary Review, August, 1906, p. 283. * Ibidem, 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 375 

ministers resign, governors-general imperceptibly recede 
from their posts, scientific institutions, learned professions, 
local councils, members of the nobility, individuals and 
guilds of the merchant class, the peasant masses, band them- 
selves together to struggle against the autocracy, which, 
Archimedes-like, is solicitous only for its circles. For Russia 
such an unwonted condition of things is truly revolutionary 
and chaotic." ^ And surveying the revolutionary ferment 
with an eye to its probable duration I gave it as my opinion 
that **it cannot by its nature be short: but, protean in its 
shapes and clumsy in its methods, may last throughout the 
century/' ^ 

But that the autocracy was doomed and would not survive 
Nicholas II., I felt as certain as one can be of any future 
event dependent upon a variety of factors with most of which 
one is conversant. As far back as May, 1905, I wrote of 
Nicholas II. as the last of the Tsars and added: "Autoc- 
racy has heated its palace with sparks, and must now do 
penance in the ashes." ^ 

But Count Witte looked more hopefully on the situation 
as beseems a man of action wont to wield power, to seize 
opportunity, and successfully to modify circumstance. He 
long clung to the belief that under certain conditions, more 
and more difficult to realise, the problem might yet be 
solved of welding into one the disparate elements of the 
Tsardom and modernising the mediaeval State by a home 
and foreign policy of his own devising. His plan was to 
create common economic interests which would absorb most 
of the activity, co-ordinate the efforts, and knit together the 
various races and classes of the population. The differences 
among these he would have lessened by rendering accessible 
to all who were ambitious or gifted conmiercial and industrial 
training in schools and technological institutes.* Parallel 
with this he would have fostered the inchoate native indus- 
tries by establishing profitable markets for their output in 

^Contemporary Review, February, 1905, p. 285. 

• Ibidem, p. 2^. 

• National Review, May, 1005, p. 446. 

• While iMnancc Minister he accomplished much in this line. 



376 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the Far East. And by way of rendering these endeavours 
continuous and fruitful, it was his determination to keep 
Russia out of war — which he always felt would be her 
undoing — by entering into a continental league which would 
settle the affairs of the world, not indeed without a backing 
of military force, but without actually employing it. 

But the people whose vital interest it was that Witte's or 
some similar scheme should be worked out to a successful 
issue, the Tsar, the dynasty, the Jews, the Liberals, and the 
entire intelligentsia, turned against him with rare unanimity 
and persistence and thwarted his every project. After 1906, 
he had frequent visions of the disastrous convulsions in 
which the Tsardom would expire. 

Long before that he had foretold the anarchist revolution 
which would, he feared, change not only the regime but 
the face of Russia. I have a lively recollection of one 
prophecy of his made to me in the United States shortly 
after the accord with the Japanese, when in one of his moods 
of exaltation he said: "When I am at home and watch the 
flow of political and social events my attention is almos 
wholly taken up by their bearings on each other and by their 
nexus with foregoing occurrences, whereas the stream of 
general tendency which they also reveal often escapes me, 
But looking back now and from this distance at thing 
Russian, I seem to discern that current more plainly because 
I can see the whole community as distinguished from groups 
and coteries and classes and nationalities. Well, let me tel 
you what strikes me: It is the slow but steady advance o 
Russia towards a politico-social ordering very different from 
any evolutionary stage of the present regime, possibly 
approaching that of America. Are you surprised? Undei 
certain unrealised conditions it might be a blessing. It ia 
largely a question of education and training, but also, to some 
extent, of inborn capacity. 

"The people of the United States have strengthened mj 
faith in the future of humanity. Their generosity makes me 
feel that my idea of the reconstruction of Europe will develop, 
no doubt in other hands than mine, into a project for the 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 377 

reconstruction of the world. From the narrow political angle 
of vision, the United States government had much to gain 
by letting us go on fighting Japan to a finish. Both 
belligerents would have been enormously weakened and 
America might then have had the satisfaction of settling the 
problems of the Pacific in her own fashion. That was the 
selfish, the European way of treating the matter. But 
instead of that, President Roosevelt and the entire people 
generously put forth their whole-hearted efforts to get both 
war-waging peoples to lay down their arms and negotiate 
peace. That altruism is worthy of the new era which it 
foreshadows. I shall never forget this noble deed. Leagued 
with a few such peoples we could safeguard the peace of 
the world. But at present that is only a pious desire . . . 
and besides, the Americans have no end of grievances 
against us. 

*1 am now going back home bound by promises to Jews 
and Christians here to do my best to modify the repressive 
legislation that keeps the people of Russia further apart from 
that of the United States than does the ocean. . . . How 
shall I redeem them? You know what it means. The 
Americans do not. To abolish even the Jewish Pale of 
Settlement is but a fraction of what is expected of me. Yet 
that alone would involve a profound modification of the 
autocracy as at present established. Here in the bracing 
atmosphere of the great republic such a feat may seem 
insignificant. But on the other side of Eydtkuhnen ^ it is high 
treason to think of it. But I will do my l^est. . . ." He did. 
But he was alone, and as the Russians put it, "one man in 
the field is not a soldier." 

That is why I wrote a few months later: "Witte's views 
are immaterial to the issue, for if he were as Liberal as 
Abraham Lincoln, he would still be almost as powerless as 
a Sioux chief, unless he had a strong Liberal following and 
that was denied him chiefly by the Jews." - He had no fol- 
lowing because of the anarcliist or unsiwrial leanings of the 

*The German frontier station on the journey to St» Petersburg. 
* North ^Imcrican Rnnnv, February. i(;o6, p. 469. 




378 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

population. "It is clear/* I wrote, "that the Slav nation 
lacks political education and self-control; has no idea of 
tactics, no habit of discipline, hardly yet a standard by which 
to separate the secondary from the essential, the final goal 
from those intermediate aims which differ little from the 
means. The elements of the population that display an 
interest in public affairs are animated by a spirit of insub- 
ordination which makes it hard for them to combine. They 
are atoms which would seem to repel rather than attract each 
other, so that in lieu of a few strong parties a large number 
of little groups are likely to be formed. Moreover they are 
more deeply moved by purely personal considerations than 
by patriotism, discerning friends and enemies where we 
should expect them to see only Russia and her destinies." 

The abortive rising of 1905-6, which I watched at close 
quarters, convinced me that any democratic revolution, 
however peacefully effected, would throw open the gates 
wide to the forces of anarchism and break up the Empire. 
And a glance at the mere mechanical juxtaposition — it could 
not be called union — of elements so conflicting among them- 
selves as were the ethnic, social, and religious sections and 
divisions of the Tsar's subjects would have brought home 
this obvious truth to the mind of any unbiassed and observant 
student of politics. The mad spectacle which was unfolded 
to my gaze by that revolt revealed the further fact that the 
army, the workmen, and the peasantry were much more 
likely to fraternise with each other and pull down the pillars 
of the social fabric than seemed possible to the ministers of 
the crown. Nay, the bureaucrats themselves appeared to me 
capable of throwing over the Tsar on the spur of the moment 
and proclaiming their faith in republicanism or in any other 
regime that might take the people's fancy. For nothing 
was impossible to their curious psychology. I had had 
amazing examples of these sudden conversions before my 
eyes when I wrote: "The capers cut by the officials were 
specially amusing. Prematurely giving up the autocracy 
as lost, large numbers of them made hot-haste to turn from 
what they deemed the setting to the rising sun. They 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 379 

announced that they had always been democrats at heart, 
had always known that the regime was rotten and would 
fall to pieces. The autocracy, on which they had lived and 
still were living, they proceeded to scourge with tongues 
that stung like scorpions until there was not a sound 
place left in it. *A man's foes shall be those of his own 
household.' " ^ 

Witte, had he had a free hand, the confidence of the 
Emperor, and an adequate following from the year 1905 
until his death, might at the utmost have prolonged for a 
little the life of the Tsardom while gradually limiting the 
power of the Tsar. By the time of Stolypin's violent death 
things had come to such a pass that there was no longer 
hope for either. 

In lieu of Witte's statesmanlike plan, we find a foreign 
policy which was deeply marked by systematic disloyalty to 
the principal powers with" which the Tsardom had friendly 
or neighbourly intercourse and a system of home govern- 
ment destructive of the basis of all morality. Towards 
Britain the duplicity of the Tsardom, several instances of 
which I have already mentioned,^ was continued down to 
the moment when M. Izvolsky exchanged views with King 
Edward about the Entente scheme which Poklevsky had 
first submitted to Witte. And then the duplicity ceased, but 
only in so far as the foreign policy was conducted by the 
Tsar's ministers; it remained as trothless as before when 
directed by the Tsar himself. It is noteworthy that even 
towards Germany, who enjoyed the "traditional friendship 
of the Tsardom," a tendency to sharp practice now and again 
startled the politicians of Berlin, as, for instance, during the 
negotiations about German participation in the Russo- 
Chinese bank. So untrustworthy was Nicholas II. in all 
his dealings that it is doubtful whether he could always 
be true to his own self. Towards China, the Tsardom 
and its servants deemed every form of wile and treachery 

^ North American Review, February, 1906, p. 462. 

'The Persian loan episode, the seizure of Port Arthur, the secret letter 
to the Emir of Afghanistan, and the readiness to combine with Germany 
Igainst us during the Boer war are instances. 



380 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

permissible. The giving away by Nicholas II. of a Chinese 
port to the Kaiser; the seizure of another port by the Tsar 
himself, who a short time before had received the use of 
Chinese territory for his railway; the infamous plot to kid- 
nap the Emperor and the Empress of China while bound to 
them by ties of intimate friendship, will rank in political 
history with the most iniquitous doings of Frederic the Great. 
But whereas the Prussian king's obliquity was invariably a 
means, and generally an efficacious means, to an intelligible 
and patriotic end, the perfidies of the Tsardom served merely 
as the measure of its own depravity, pettiness, and impotence. 
The reader will not be surprised to learn that history is unable 
to acquit the Tsarist State of what may fairly be termed sharp 
practice towards Austria-Hungary in the matter of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina. 

Whithersoever we turn our eyes we are confronted with 
the same combination of cunning and deception. While 
professing most friendly feelings and cultivating cordial 
relations with Turkey, the Tsar, together with Nelidoff and 
Tshikhatshoff, planned a treacherous attack on the shores 
of the Upper Bosphorus which was with difficulty thwarted 
by Witte. While ''practising" an intimate alliance with 
France, Russia in the person of her Tsar concluded a secret 
alliance with France's covert enemy, Germany, thus under- 
taking to fight on the side of each against the other. While 
the negotiations between the Kaiser and Tsar were going 
on with a view to this accord I wrote: "France's position 
is unique. ... As a nation she is mistrusted for sowing 
revolutionary ideas broadcast, but tolerated as the keeper 
of the money bags. As a power she is regarded as a qmntite 
ncgligeable and is slighted accordingly. Her milliards are so 
many hostages which she has given to Russia for her good 
behaviour. Autocracy possessed of the calf takes no further 
thought of the cow which, however plaintively it may low, 
is certain not to stray too far away." 

In 19 10 the Tsar at Potsdam struck up another compact 
with Wilhelm II. according to which neither of them was 
to become a member of any combination of powers forme* 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 381 

against the other. In that same year most of the Russian 
troops quartered in Warsaw, Brest-Litovsk, Grodno, which 
would, in case of war, have endangered Germany's mobihsa- 
tion, were withdrawn. Lastly, when the Germans in their 
turn were arranging to take possession of Constantinople, 
by the despatch of General Liman von Sanders and his 
military mission, the Tsar and the Kaiser came to a secret 
agreement approving it. But again the Russian ministers 
were kept in the dark about it by Nicholas II. 

'The most painful impression of all," Entente publicists 
tell us, was made by the perfidious conduct of Nicholas II. 
in arranging for a separate peace in the year 191 6- 17 when 
his devoted allies were shedding their blood and giving their 
substance ungrudgingly in his cause. I cannot agree with 
them. I have made inquiries into this allegation and, although 
it is uncommonly difficult to prove a negative assertion, the 
upshot of my investigation comes as near to it as one can 
reasonably demand. So far as I have been able to ascertain 
there is not a tittle of evidence to show that Nicholas II. had 
the intention to make a separate peace. That conditions 
being what they were his armies could not, with the best 
will in the world, have continued to fight much longer on 
the same scale as theretofore may be taken for granted. But 
it nowise follows that he would have concluded a separate 
peace. And from what I know of his mentality, of the 
motives to which he was most im.pressible, and of the 
available evidence, I look upon that assumption as most 
improlxible.^ The fact is that Nicholas II. was waging war 
on two fronts, one against our common enemies and the 
other against revolutionary bolshcvism in Russia, and this 
indictment is probably part of the tactics of the bolshovist 
offensive which had the sui)port of the luiglish and the 
French. I venture to go further and to assert that from the 
point of view of the Allies the safest policy consisted in keep- 
ing Nicholas II. on the throne while giving him a cabinet 

* Certain ignoble charges launclud against the Tsaritsa, whose meddling 
in politics was disastrous to the TsardcHn, arc equally groundless and even 
more characteristic of those who first launched them. 



382 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

of ministers responsible to the Duma. And Great Britain 
and France, had each had a supple statesman at their head, 
could have accomplished the two-fold task with an intelligent 
effort. 

The extinction of this gross, widespread, and a priori 
credible accusation leaves the unflattering portrait which I 
drew of the Tsar in the year 1904 with all its traits intact: 
the cunning, the love of secrecy, the self -worship, the petti- 
ness, the instability, and the deficiency of moral sense. To 
end the feeble, shifty, extravagant dynasty of the Holstein- 
Gottorps, Fate would appear to have selected its most typical 
representative. 

If the intercourse of the Tsarist State with other nations 
was characterised by systematic bad faith, its dealings with 
its own subjects were, as I have shown, destructive of all 
morality. By the year 1906 it had fallen so low that sys- 
tematic recourse to crime of a peculiarly dastardly kind had 
become its mainstay. Conspiracies against the government, 
against State dignitaries, and even against princes of the 
reigning house were deliberately hatched by State servants in 
order to supply them with a pretext for shooting, hanging, 
or imprisoning men who only asked for a regime like that 
which existed in Austria or Prussia. And in order to enable 
the double-dyed miscreants who thus entrapped their unsus- 
pecting fellows to continue their work of treachery, the State 
connived at the execution of several of those abominable 
plots against such pillars of the Tsardom as Von Plehve, the 
Grand Duke Sergius, General von Launitz, and Stolypin. 

Although it was known to the government that their agent 
Azeff had had these and other zealous champions of autoc- 
racy done to death in order to maintain his credit with the 
terrorists, he was still retained in the service of the Tsar. 
And while monarchists were thus slaying monarchists for 
the good of Tsarism, Kazantseff and his group of reaction- 
aries were inveigling ignorant revolutionists into assassinat- 
ing eminent liberal reformers, assuring them that they were 
executing spies. Life in the Tsardom could not be contem- 
plated as other than the abomination of desolation. 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 383 

The main object of these diabolic methods was to per- 
petuate a system which for iniquity had no parallel in 
Christendom, and to keep 140,000,000 peasants in a plight 
which makes one wonder as much at their pre-revolutionary 
patience as one has wondered since at their anarchist frenzy. 
I once sketched the state of things roughly as follows : *Too 
often the Russian peasant dwells in a hovel more fikhy than 
a sty, more noxious than a phosphoric match factory. He 
goes to bed at six and even five o'clock in the winter, because 
he cannot afford money to buy petroleum enough for arti- 
ficial light. He has no meat, no eggs, no butter, no milk, 
often no cabbage, and lives mainly on black bread and 
potatoes. Lives? He starves on an insufficient quantity of 
them. At this moment there are numerous peasants in 
Bessarabia who for lack of that staple food are dying of 
hunger. At this moment in White Russia, after the de- 
parture of the reserves for the seat of war, there are many 
households in which not even a pound of rye corn is left for 
the support of the families who have lost their breadwinners. 
And yet those starving men, women, and children had 
raised plenty of corn to live upon — for the Russian tiller of 
the soil eats chiefly black bread, and is glad when he has 
enough of that. But they were forced to sell it immediately 
after the harvest in order to pay the taxes. And they sold it 
for nominal prices — so cheap that the foreigners could re- 
sell it to them cheaper than Russian corn merchants !" * 
Such was the material plight of a large section of the Tsar's 
subjects. 

As for the fog that enwrapped the souls of millions of 
these famished human beings, its denseness may be imagined 
when I say that many of them had no standard of right and 
wrung. Imagine the mental state of the followers of Father 
John of Cronstadt, who, in a village * worshipping my late 
acquaintance as an incarnation of the Supreme Being, sacri- 
ficed a woman in his honour — a woman aged forty-one, the 
mother of a family of five! They declared, when questioned, 

* Contemporary Review, March, 1905, p. 313. 
■The village of Upper Yelshanka. 



384 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

that this was an offering all the more acceptable to the 
Almighty that the victim herself was eager thus to suffer 
death for her faith. And so pleased were these pious people 
with their weird act of adoration that they were making ready 
to sacrifice two other women when the police intervened. 

It was to perpetuate this hell upon earth that the govern- 
ment abolished human and divine law ! 

The weight of the crimes perpetrated by the Tsarist State 
may be said to have dragged it into the abyss. For it fell 
mechanically, so to say. Neither in 1905 nor in 191 7 was 
the revolution methodically planned.^ In the former year 
there were only three thousand socialists and one thousand 
social revolutionists in the capital, yet even then the up- 
heaval would probably have been successful if there had 
been one strong man on their side. On the other hand, the 
outbreak of 191 7 might have been repressed if the Tsar 
had had a man of grit in his service. In 1905 there were a 
number of secret societies in the army spreading sedition 
among the soldiers, whereas in 19 17 there would appear 
to have been none. To method, organisation, or leadership, 
therefore, the success of the movement cannot fairly be 
ascribed, nor even to the concerted action of the revolu- 
tionary parties. Indeed, it is worth noting that neither in 
preparing the upheaval nor in moderating or shaping it 
did the so-called revolutionary parties play a prominent 
or a perceptible part. Nor was it until the upshot of 
the sudden convulsion was manifest and the Petersburg 
Council of Working Men and Soldiers was formed that the 
groups of the extreme Left bestirred themselves and strode 
into the foreground. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to 
affirm that the Russian revolution was not the work of the 
professional revolutionists, but came to pass independently 
of their exertions. 

The army as a whole was loyal to the monarchy. The 

*I received from some of the principal Bolsheviks letters to the effect 
that it v^^ould break out at the end of March or the beginning of April, and 
taking these intimations together with other symptoms I felt pretty sure 
that the date was correct. But a wide-awake government could have 
adjourned it until the end of the war. 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 385 

officers who desired the deposition of the "Colonel," as 
Nicholas II. was commonly called in military circles, were 
a very small minority, and, so far as I have ascertained, the 
army was free from those secret soldiers' organisations 
which spread disaffection and fostered rebellion in the year 
1905.^ The street tumults which ushered in the troubles, 
for which the minister Protopopoff had made all requisite 
preparations, were caused appropriately enough by the de- 
liberate provocation of his secret police and by the artificial 
scarcity of food which he had of set purpose brought about. 
Here again we are confronted with that poetic justice of 
which we have had so many curious instances since the 
year 19 14. 

If it had not been for the mutiny of the reserve battalions 
of the Guards, Protopopoff could and would have carried 
out his programme, mown down the discontented citizens 
with his machine guns, and proceeded to rule Russia with 
a rod of iron. Nay, even if these contingents had remained 
inactive, the government would have scored a sanguinary 
victory. The soldiers mutinied in obedience, not to an order 
from a superior officer, but to a spontaneous impulse of 
their own. 

These remarks are confirmed by the circumstance that 
none of the leaders of the revolutionary or extremist parties 
lost their lives in the street-fighting — a proof of the sudden- 
ness and rapidity with which the movement was unchained 
and developed. 

While the riots in the capital were still proceeding, a 
number of prominent party men foregathered in the Tech- 
nological Institute and, after the manner of 1905, organised 
a council of workmen to control the acts of the government. 
But it was the soldiers, not the workmen, who had just 
turned the scales against Tsarism, and some one present, 
who bore the fact in mind, proposed that the name of 
the organisation should Ixi amended to Council of Work- 
men and Soldiers.- The motion was acclaimed, and this 
seemingly insignificant addition — *'aml soldiers** — to the 
*Cf. Russhaya Svoboda. No. 4, p. 21. *Op. cit., p. 23. 



386 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

appellation engendered a far-reaching change in the direc- 
tion of the revolutionary stream, which thenceforward flowed 
away from the Duma towards the army. 

The soldiers whose sudden revolt had defeated the govern- 
ment were astonished next day to find themselves thus classed 
as revolutionaries and made co-heirs of these in the kingdom 
of liberty that was about to come. But they had no lively 
expectation of speedily entering into their inheritance, for 
after a few days' fighting in the streets they returned to 
their barracks ready to recommence the old routine anew. 
The Tsar was still on the throne. The war was raging at 
the fronts. The military organism had undergone no essen- 
tial change, and so far as it was concerned the only difference 
to be anticipated — after the abdication of Nicholas II. — was 
that its supreme head would have been the military commis- 
sion of the Duma. That was the goal towards which things 
military were manifestly wending. It was desired by the 
parliamentary chiefs, it was demanded by the generals, it was 
acquiesced in by the soldiers themselves. 

But circumstance, stronger than the will of men, impressed 
a new movement on the stream of events and changed the 
history of Russia and of Europe. The intelligentsia, which 
so often in opposition had unwittingly marred opportunity, 
baulked statesmanlike effort, and clogged the wheels of prog- 
ress, now invested with power, issued the famous Edict No. i 
"democratising" the army. Elections were ordered for repre- 
sentatives of the soldiers to the Petersburg ^ Council, military 
discipline was abolished, and the nation's weapon, the army, 
was shattered. . . . Thus the Bologna phial of the Tsardom 
was scratched by the author of that order and all its molecules 
were scattered in the winds. 

What I had foreseen and foretold twelve years before had 
come to pass. The intelligentsia, finding themselves at the 
head of affairs, ruined Russia's cause and their own. Word- 
weavers and theory-importers, they sacrificed the Duma to 
the army, the army to the anarchists, and their country to the 
foreign enemy for the sake of the merest claptrap. During 

*The capital is still called Petersburg by the Bolshevik government. 



i 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 387 

the attempts at revolution in 1906 I wrote: ^'Speaking of 
the Russian Empire which Nicholas 11. received from his 
father, Alexander III., one may say with as much certitude 
as such contingent judgments admit, that it could have been 
governed at least for another forty or fifty years without a 
constitution. But on condition that it was governed. The 
Prussians of the days of Frederick the Great were much 
more intelligent than the Russians of to-day, yet they enjoyed 
absolutism and throve under it. But then although absolute 
it was really government, and justice was its basis. The 
Russians of to-day — the masses of benighted peasantry — are 
unfitted to govern the Empire, and for that reason a strong 
autocracy might have long continued in power. But even 
peasants will not endure starvation by inches, which was 
what absolutism offered to many of them. Like the worm, 
the Mooshik will turn when trodden on. The Russian 
people now demand a constitution, not because they are 
already fitted for it, but because the bureaucracy is no longer 
capable of carrying on the system of absolutism. The process 
by which the necessity of a radical change has been impressed 
upon the consciousness of the people was long and circuitous, 
but the result is there and cannot be reasoned away. To 
the will of the nation the government can oppose only the 
bayonets of the troops, and even the tempered steel of 
bayonets will not long support a throne devoid of all other 
props. And that is now the relative position of the autocracy 
and the army. 

"The troops are not yet disaffected as a whole. The great 
majority of the soldiers are still devoted to the Tsar and 
ol^dient to his officers. But the work of disintegration is 
going on rapidly, and may, nay must, in the end prove 
thorough. ... In five years, three years, or a few months 
the army may go over to the enemy. And then ? Then the 
anarehists zinll have triumphed. 

"The tactics of the revolutionists arc. perhaps, dVicacicus 
from a purely party point of view; from the standpoint of 
the Empire they are disastrous. They remind one of the 
fabulous Chinaman who burned down his hut in order to 



388 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

roast a pig. To revolutionise the army is not merely to put 
a spoke in the wheel of the monarchy, it is to ruin the whole 
nation. For anarchists this policy is conceivable, but not for 
any political party, however eager to pull down the prevail- 
ing political system. To sow the seed of disaffection among 
the troops is to deprive the nation of its one weapon of 
defence, to place the people and all that they possess at the 
mercy of the foreign foe." ^ 

Trite though these axioms may be they were not assimi- 
lated, and although the consequences of disregarding them 
were obviously sinister and manifest, nothing was under- 
taken to dislodge their cause. The circumstance that among 
the intelligentsia there was no mind receptive, flexible, and 
resourceful enough for constructive revolutionary leadership 
materially contributed to render the downfall of the Tsardom 
tantamount to the dismemberment of Russia. 

Thus the upheaval, which lacked a constructive idea and 
a statesmanlike leader, was neither organised nor foreseen 
nor prepared for. It was a spontaneous movement of the 
Russian Enceladus to ease his suffering, and it shook the 
politico-social fabric to its nethermost foundations. All 
Russia was still one and undivided. Nor was it until the 
autocracy had been pulled down by the shock that various 
material interests laid hold of the revolutionary forces and 
began to use them for particular and unhallowed ends. 
What at the outset was the instinctive effort of a gigantic 
entity to right and save itself became immediately afterwards 
a process of gangrenous decomposition. No sooner had the 
whole nation risen up as one man against Tsarism than a 
sequence of struggles began of one interest against another, 
whereby the chaotic flood which had long seethed and hissed 
below the smooth unified surface maintained by the Tsardom 
burst into the light of day and overwhelmed the country and 
its peoples. 

In the Bolshevik movement there is not the vestige of a 
constructive or social idea. Even the Western admirers of 
Lenin and Trotzky cannot discover any. Genuine socialism 
^Contemporary Review, August, 1906, pp. 286 and 287. 



DOWNFALL OF TSARDOM 389 

means the organic ordering of the social whole, and of this 
in the Bolshevik process there is no trace. Far from that, a 
part is treated as the whole and the remainder is no better 
off than were the serfs under Alexander I. and Nicholas I. 
For Bolshevism is Tsarism upside down. To capitalists it 
metes out treatment as bad as that which the Tsars dealt to 
serfs. It suppresses newspapers, forbids liberty of the press, 
arrests or banishes the elected of the nation, and connives at 
or encourages crimes of diabolical ferocity. 

It is charitable to assume that the intelligentsia would not 
have abandoned the Duma and the army if they had under- 
stood their own people and foreseen its behaviour in a 
state of freedom from restraint. One hopes that they knew 
not what they did. One of their own spiritual chiefs now 
agrees with what I wrote of them in the days when Alexander 
II. was Tsar. "Russians," he says, "readily abandon 
themselves to dreams, illusion, and self-deception. They 
are easily fascinated by the possibility of speedily bringing 
down upon earth the definite kingdom of justice, the social 
paradise, but they lack the sterner, the more masculine and 
responsible virtues. Deliberate toil has no channs for the 
Russian people. They rely for everything upon catastrophic 
leaps and bounds from the realm of necessity into the realm 
of liberty. The Russians have been demoralised by autoc- 
racy and morally crippled by protracted slavery, by the 
ingrained habit of trusting for everything to the ruling and 
the predominant classes. And the past has flung its for- 
bidding shadow across our present and our future. As a 
counterweight to the flattery now in vogue it behoves us to 
proclaim frankly that in the Russian people there is a fatal 
lack of honour, and this defect is a consequence of their long 
continued thraldom. This lack of honour and the utter 
absence among them of the sense of responsibility and duty 
are lightly cloaked with social theories permeated with the 
poison of flattery administered to the popular masses." ^ 

In response to the call of the well-meaning intelligentsia, 
who made their evocations efficacious by adding to them the 

*Cf. N. Bcrdyayeff, Russkaya Svoboda, Nos. 12-13, pp. 5 and 6, 



390 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

sacrifice of the Duma and the army, the spirit of anarchy arose 
from the deep and cannot now be laid. Chaos may, therefore, 
rage on, spreading ruin in Russia until it reaches the point 
of self-negation. By that time, however, and congruously 
with that disastrous void, the configuration of Europe may 
have definitely changed. That is the danger which I have 
long apprehended and desired to see warded off. For it 
obviously meant internal disruption and German domination. 
That is why I wrote when the breakdown of the autocracy 
began with the abortive revolution of eleven years ago: 
"Without claiming to descry things further ahead than the 
average politician, one might make a heavy wager that before 
Russia resumes her lost position among the nations of the 
earth, Germany will have won for herself at the expense of 
her neighbours a position of prestige and power unexampled 
in European history since the Middle Ages.'* ^ 

^Contemporary Review, August, 1906, p. 271. 



POSTSCRIPT 

I MADE that forecast in the year 1906 and everything that 
has happened since tended to confirm it. 

But what of the future? the reader may ask. Have Rus- 
sia's sands indeed run down? Will her dissolution not be 
followed by a glorious resurrection? In answer to these and 
kindred questions it may be pointed out that the province of 
the historian and that of his less ambitious auxiliaries is to 
supply the public with relevant and well-sifted facts, not with 
forecasts that cannot be verified. 

From the partial sketch outlined in the foregoing pages 
it may seem to follow that the Russian people has been not 
merely knocked out of the lists as a belligerent, but also per- 
manently incapacitated as a nation for a prominent part in 
the politico-social progress of the world. And one may ask 
why I have refrained from drawing this conclusion? For if 
it be true that the bulk of the population is intellectually 
benighted, morally obtuse, politically indifferent, and socially 
incohesive, it follows that it is also insensible to the only 
motives strong enough to determine such an effort as would 
make regeneration possible. Not even an army can be raised 
until these conditions are remedied. And an army is but the 
first of a long series of conditions requisite for a new birth. 
When Russia has national forces again, she will be in posses- 
sion of a most important element of renewed vitality, but only 
of one. And as yet she is still far removed even from that. 

Those who reason thus are assuming that the future 
development of mankind will run on the lines of its past 
progress. And the grounds for this assumption are in- 
adequate. Yet oddly enough, many of these critics are also 
zealous champions of the supremacy of right over force and 
of arbitration as a substitute for war, and these doctrines, 
warped it may be and discoloured, are to be discerned at the 
roots of Russia's great renunciation. It must therefore be 

391 



392 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

acknowledged that the Russian people are in a more fitting 
mood to listen to President Wilson's scheme of future re- 
construction than any of their neighbours. That the various 
parts of the Tsardom will be put together again and the 
breath of life poured into the reintegrated and rejuvenated 
organism is to my thinking improbable. The principle of 
national self-determination for which the Allies profess to be 
fighting is apparently an effectual barrier to this were there 
no other. The utmost that one can hope is that the Russian 
race will unite and come into its own. 

The majority of the nation is still hardly more than 
raw material for the State-builder. It lacks almost all the 
advantages which religion, education, instruction, political 
training, economic development, and intercourse with pro- 
gressive peoples have bestowed on its competitors, and it is 
hampered with the vices which a grinding and ruthless 
tyranny working unhindered for centuries succeeded in 
grafting on its impressionable soul. That so much of what 
is humane still survives in the Russian — his natural religion 
of pity, his pitiless self-criticism, his enthusiasm for noble 
causes, his detachment from the grosser sides of life, and the 
cheerful alacrity with which he will die for an idea or a 
friend — bespeaks an equipment, intellectual and moral, which 
if properly cultivated may reasonably be expected to bring 
forth excellent fruits. 

One cannot fully understand the first act of the Russian 
revolution until the curtain has fallen on the last, nor before 
one has seen the channels traced by circumstance for the 
civilising currents of the future is it possible to divine the 
part in the making of history which the nation will be 
qualified to play. Ages of ignorance and serfdom may have 
suspended but have not wholly crushed the freedom of 
spirit, the fellow-feeling for suffering, and the embryonic 
humanities characteristic of the race. These qualities, freed, 
from the many and noxious weeds with which they are still 
entangled, may yet make of Russia a potent social force 
capable of being directed to a high ethical purpose. 

E. J. Dillon. 



APPENDIX 
Details of the Secret Treaty 

WiTTE narrated to me in detail his experiences in Paris, 
his talks with the French Premier, and what came of them. 
Suddenly he received from the Russian Minister of Foreign 
Affairs the telegram: ''Kaiser Wilhelm invites you to visit 
him at Rominten. His Majesty the Tsar desires you to repair 
thither on your way home." 

This imperial behest was the outcome of an exchange of 
telegrams that had taken place between Wilhelm II. and 
Nicholas II. On 4th September, the Kaiser, who was then 
at Rominten, had telegraphed to the Tsar: ''Witte is, as I 
hear, on his return journey. Would you allow him to visit 
me en passant on his way to Russia? as I intend decorating 
him on account of the coming into existence of the treaty 
of commerce which he concluded last year with Bulow. 
Happy cruise! Our manoeuvres most interesting in lovely 
country, but very wet! Best love to Alix. Willy." On nth 
September Wilhelm again telegraphs: "By your kind order 
Witte will be here on 26/13. Is he infonned of our treaty? 
Am I to tell him about it if he is not? Best love to Alix. 
Killed four stags here, nothing especially big. Weather cool 
and fine. Waldmanns Hcil!" To this question the Tsar 
despatched the following answer: "Till now the Grand 
Duke Nikolas, the War Minister, the chief of general stall, 
and Lamsdorff are informed about treaty. Have nothing 
against your telling Witte alx)ut it. Enjoying my stay on 
the Polar Star, dry fine weather. Best love from Alix. 
Waldmanns Dank. Nicky." Con.sequently Nicholas II. had 
no objection to the Kaiser's opening the matter to Witte. 
But the evidence goes to show that it was not done. 

"After having received this telegram I remained only 
two days longer in the French capital and then set out for 
Rominten. You know how I was received there. I^Vederic 
could not have been more cordial towards Voltaire wlicn 

393 



394 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the great Frenchman arrived at Potsdam. The Kaiser 
seemed transfigured. His face was a sequence of smiles. 
His every tone and gesture a spell. He talked of various 
topical subjects. But before touching upon that of France 
and Morocco, the Kaiser looking at me searchingly asked, 
'Do you remember our talk about the new ordering of 
Europe some ten years back?* and then he reflected as 
though he were brightening up the traits of the picture in 
his mind. Ten years ago you gave expression to an opinion 
that caused me to meditate much and anxiously upon the 
affairs of Europe, the decay of the old continent, the rise of 
young and robust nations, and the special part which we, 
the order-bringing races, are foredestined to play. Let me 
recall that conversation. You said tTiat the nations of 
Europe should as far as possible imitate the North American 
States, combine for a permanent and common end, should 
cease to squander the best part of their wealth in arms, and 
to risk the noblest of their achievements in intestine wars, 
and that they should cease to wage fiscal and economic 
struggles as they now do.' 

"Here I interrupted him and said that to the best of my 
recollection I had pleaded for the separation of political and 
economic aims. 'Yes, yes,' he rejoined, *but that is only a 
detail. If we were as free from that exhausting drainage as 
the United States are, what a difference it would make to 
us and to the world ! The price paid for this consummation 
would shrink to nothing in comparison with the benefits it 
would confer. Europe as a State system might then reckon 
on a life of thousands of years, whereas if we go on snarling 
and biting as at present the process of decay will not be 
arrested. Europe will die as Egypt died, and Assyria and 
Rome. Now my people do not want to perish in this in- 
glorious way. They are capable of great things and burning 
to accomplish them. So, no doubt, are yours. Are these 
your views still?' They are, sire.' 'I am glad to know it. | 
But it could not be otherwise. Every fair-minded person I 
who can see the present stagnation in Europe as it really is, 
and discern the decay it involves, and who longs for health- 



APPENDIX 395 

bringing activity, pacific progress, economic order, must 
feel drawn towards our ideas. What is wanted is not a holy 
alliance or any mere temporary coalition, but something 
grander and more enduring, an organism that can live and 
grow and thrive. Mere treaties will not work the transfor- 
mation. These outward ties are useful and even necessary 
as splints and ligatures to hold the parts together until their 
union becomes organic as it now is in the German States, 
or if you prefer it, in the United States of North America.' 
These States are separated by enormous distances. Their 
economic interests, far from being identical or similar, are 
in some cases in conflict one with the other, and in any' case 
there are complicating conditions. But the States contrive 
to hit it off all the same. Well, the same result might, I am 
certain, be achieved in Europe, if the problem were deftly 
handled. Why should it not be? It is my conviction that 
the time is ripe for such a glorious undertaking. All that we 
need are the right men. And if I had such a statesman as 
you, I should have no misgivings about the end. I would 
appoint you to the chancellorship, give you carte blanche to 
realise in your own way my cherished scheme of polity, and 
I feel sure that it would assume a shape duly proportioned 
to the magnitude of the new political creation. But after all 
you are not so very far away. Petersburg and Berlin are 
next-door neighbours. And we have the telegraph wires to 
keep us in touch. I can always have the benefit of your 
advice. 

"'By the way, I was much struck with certain remarks 
you made when you and I first talked this matter over. You 
said that the political and economic aspects of the project 
of the United States of Europe ought to be kept apart and 
dealt with as far as possible separately. But in this case 
they have had to go together. Another observation you 
then made appealed to me still more strongly. \o\\ talked 
of France as an indispensable element of the new federation. 
There you were absolutely right. I agree with you fullv. 
It must be our first aim to win over France. You discerned 
that from the outset. You know the temperament of the 



396 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

French people. And they are your admirers. Your name is 
a clarion to them now. They can refuse you nothing. You 
rescued Russia, their friend and ally. Well, I want your 
precious collaboration. Will you use your influence to do 
what is feasible towards furthering the cause of Europe? I 
can rely on you?' 'Most certainly, sire, you can. I will do 
everything in my power compatible with my duty to my 
country and my sovereign. Your Majesty overrates my 
influence, but not my goodwill.' 'You will hold the rems 
of power in Russia after your return. Of that there is little 
doubt. I have a bit of good news for you. Your Emperor 
and I have lately exchanged views on this matter, and we 
are agreed with you on the principle, so that the conversa- 
tion of ours at Bjorke marks progress. We have exchanged 
ideas on the subject and are decided to act together. You 
still hold all your old views?' 'Yes, sire, without modi- 
fication.' 'Very well. You have reason to rejoice. We are 
making headway. What we are aiming at is, as you yourself 
termed it, the establishment of a political syndicate which 
is to harness all the social and political forces of the old 
continent and to use them to keep the machine of general 
government moving for the welfare of all, while leaving 
room enough for the play of divergent forces and the pur- 
suit of divergent interests. You hit the nail on the head 
when you likened it to a syndicate.' 

"It was in that sense if not in those identical words that 
the Kaiser addressed me. He scanned me closely from time 
to time while he spoke, and also whenever I replied. He 
was nimbler in his movements than I had seen him on 
former occasions, and also more visibly preoccupied by his 
subject. It seemed a kind of possession. He was also 
generous in his praise of the Tsar, and anxious to learn any 
opinion about the internal situation in Russia. He cross- 
examined me about the French statesmen I had seen, about 
Rouvier and Delcasse, about the mood of the French people, 
and kindred matters. I gave him my impressions and then 
asked him to enable me to do a favour to the French. He 
accorded it with the best grace in the world. And I obtained 



APPENDIX 397 

from him the concession about the Algeciras Conference 
which Rouvier had so ofted asked for in vain. In this way 
war was pre\'ented. Altogether the Kaiser treated me during 
my visit as though I were a reigning potentate. When we 
drove in the motor he himself acted as my chauffeur, and 
again reverted to the question of welding continental 
Europe into a co-operative association, and to the need of 
energetic seconding from me now, and still more when I 
was entrusted by the Tsar with the reins of government. I 
remember the last words I uttered to him at this our last 
meeting. I said, 'I will do my part. But I would ask you, 
sire, to send energetic ambassadors to all the capitals con- 
cerned, ambassadors who will pursue a definte, clear-cut 
policy in this direction. And then in ten years the idea may 
perhaps be realised. If when your Majesty and I first talked 
the project over you had done this, it would probably have 
been realised by now!' 

"Since then I have corresponded with the Kaiser, but I 
have never seen him." 

The above account of what passed at Rominten during 
Witte's visit was given to me by the Russian statesman 
himself on many occasions; three or four times at least he 
dictated it, and now and again when talking of other matters 
he would add in some new touch. He always assured me 
emphatically that the Kaiser never alluded in more lucid 
terms than those I have given to the important transactions 
that had passed between the two monarchs at Bjorke. **I 
left Russia," he said, "without knowing that an interview 
was projected, and I returned home without any informa- 
tion about the act for which the interview had been brought 
about." I knew Witte intimately, and I believed him im- 
plicitly. And yet the Kaiser had asked and received the 
Tsar's permission to initiate the future Russian Premier into 
the secret. What kept him back? Witte told me that lie 
attributed this semi-reserve to Wilhelm's apprehension 
that Witte would Hare up as he had done wlien he discovered 
the Kiao Chow accord, cause great unpleasantness, and 
perhaps upset the covenant, whereas if his own Tsar broke 



398 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the news to him directly or through Lamsdorff after he had 
expressed approval of the principle he would resign himself. 

What was that treaty of the existence of which even at 
the end of September hardly more than seven persons were 
aware? The best answer to that is to be found in the con- 
fidential telegrams which passed between the two Emperors 
unknown to the Russian ministers and led to the signing of 
the compact. These messages are interesting as human 
documents, and also as illustrations of the arbitrary, under- 
hand, conspirative manner in which Nicholas II. discharged 
the functions which had, he imagined, been entrusted to 
him by the Deity. They extend over a span of time reaching 
from June, 1904, down to the date of the Kaiser's visit 
to Bjorke, and they afford one a glimpse of the skill and 
knowledge of character displayed by Wilhelm II. in laying 
his snare for the weak-willed, conceited occupant of the 
throne of Peter. The deep instinct of the Hohenzollem for 
the promotion of his country's interests in the first place, 
and of his subjects' industrial interests in the second place, 
was awake from start to finish. It is instructive to watch the 
irresolution of the faint-hearted Russian, his willingness to 
take a step that might confer on him distinction as a states- 
man, his subsequent apprehension of its consequences, not 
to his country and people, but to his own puny self, his 
desire to confess the delinquency almost as soon as he had 
committed it, and to obtain forgiveness from the French, 
and of his acquiescence in the overmastering will of the 
tempter, despite the promptings of his own instincts. What- 
ever one may think of the immorality of the Hohenzollern, 
there is little to be urged against his faith in the law of cause 
and effect. 

The problem Wilhelm II. had to solve was the same that 
he had almost settled during the Boer war. Had he then 
subdued the impulse of impatience which comes naturally 
to his temperament, and gone to work with boldness, tact, 
and method, he would undoubtedly have attracted France 
to his side again and induced her to work in concert with 
Germany and Russia, as Witte had done at the time of 



APPENDIX 399 

the cancelling of the Shimonoseki Treaty. Muravieff, on 
Russia's behalf, was ready to march. M. Delcasse, it has been 
affirmed, would have followed his example if he had not 
been scared by the prospect of having to guarantee con- 
jointly with Russia the European possessions of Germany, 
including, of course, Alsace and Lorraine. This time the 
aim was essentially the same, but the elements of the 
problem were more favourable. However, the Kaiser had 
a larger choice of means. Russia was engrossed by Japan, 
and her power counted for nothing in Europe. Conse- 
quently only France needed to be won over, and the goal 
would have been reached. This stroke might have been 
effected either by blandishments or constraint. And if 
only the Tsar could be enlisted on Germany's side, then, 
to Wilhelm's thinking, the rest of the problem was plain 
sailing. For Russia could be used to decoy her ally into the 
camp of the Central Empires, or else her own infidelity 
would revolt and isolate the French. In the early part of his 
reign the Kaiser, in quest of a third ally, had oscillated 
between Russia and England, but since the Anglo-French 
Entente, and all that that seemed to him to imply, he felt 
that Britain was the enemy, and he shaped his action ac- 
cordingly.^ This action was directed to the conclusion of a 
secret treaty with Russia which, when the opportune hour 
should strike — and the sooner the better — would be dangled 
before the eyes of the French nation. France would then 
have to follow Russia into the Teuton camp or else dis- 
sociate herself from her ally, and the consequences of either 
choice would be satisfactory to Kaiser Wilhelm. All the 
probabilities, however, as they mirrored themselves in the 
mind of the sanguine German, were in favour of a complete 
reconciliation with the republic. 

But secrecy was of the very essence of success. An im- 
prudent word, a premature allusion, and all would be lost. 

* I have convincing reasons for saying that the Kaiser firmly believes, as 
do most Tritons, that King Edward discussed with the Tsar at Reval the 
attitude which their respective governments shiKild assume towards Ger- 
many. It is a fact that that topic was never even alluded to. 



400 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

For the French government must be taken unawares, 
stunned by the accomplished, the irrevocable fact, and con- 
strained suddenly to adopt a friendly or a hostile attitude 
towards it by sinking into resignation or rising to revolt. 
Then and only then could the intended result be secured. 
That the Kaiser should have thought it possible to obtain 
the willing aid of Nicholas II. for the execution of such an 
infamous design on the Tsardom's best friends indicates 
his low estimate of the Russian's moral worth and sound- 
ness of intelligence. That he succeeded so completely 
demonstrates the correctness of his conception. One cannot 
but recognise that, whatever blunders were made by the 
Germans before and during the Great War in forecasting 
the action of this or that people, the Kaiser in the tactics he 
adopted towards his brother sovereign is a master example 
of clear-eyed psychological penetration. With his view of 
morality he may well take pride in what was undoubtedly a 
brilliant feat. 

Nicholas II., representing the Tsardom and its peoples, 
was on the most friendly footing with France. He had 
already committed a grievous blunder, which was hardly 
to be distinguished from a crime against the alliance, by 
leading his country into a disastrous war against Japan 
which had shorn him of his prestige, disheartened his army, 
and thrown his entire Empire out of gear. And Germany 
had hastened to make capital out of his folly. The Morocco 
tangle was held up to be unravelled, and the Kaiser's 
ministers insisted that it should be done in their way and 
under their supervision. The French Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, who demurred and took up the position that ratified 
treaties must be respected, was removed by his own col- 
leagues congruously with the demand made by the German 
emissary, Henckel von Donnersmarck, who visited Paris 
for the purpose. Since then the French government had 
been enduring the tortures of suspense. War clouds hung 
heavy in the firmament. The German government had 
declared to the French Premier through its ambassador in 
Paris that unless the international conference it demanded 



APPENDIX 401 

were agreed to, "you must bear in mind that Germany 
with all its forces is at the back of Morocco." ^ The Ger- 
man Chancellor exhorted the French ambassador ^ "not to 
linger on a path bordered by precipices and even abysses." 

That was the moment chosen by the Kaiser to begin the 
weaving of his spells around the soulless figure-head that 
sat upon the Russian throne. And the pitiful semblance of 
a monarch saw nothing preposterous, nothing incongruous, 
in the proposal made to him. 

The confidential telegrams are instructive, and from 
various points of view well worth studying. The Kaiser's 
tone when alluding to "Uncle Albert" or "Uncle Bertie" 
(Edward VII.) at first respectful, and then almost unfriendly 
as England's influence on Russia becomes more and more 
sensible; his assumption that Nicholas II. will not make 
peace yet but will risk his entire fleet and sink deeper into 
the bog; his tender friendship for his brother sovereign, 
which suddenly turns into angr}^ surprise accompanied by 
unmistakable threats when a Russian cruiser seizes a German 
steamer ' and commits an act of "piracy," and the con- 
gruous alteration of his signature from Willy to Wilhelm — 
are all traits of which neither the politician nor the psy- 
chologist will miss the significance. The anxious solicitude 
of the Kaiser for the honour and the military victory of 
Russia has a ring about it which recalls some of Mephisto's 
phrases, as for example when he urges the Tsar to order 
the ships in the Far East to make a supreme dash against 
those of the enemy and foretells the result : "The vessels 
in the harbour are, of course, the main attraction for the 
Japaneses (sic). I hope they will make a try for the Japanese 
fleet, and if they manage to run down or smash or damage 
the four line-of-battlcships left to Japan, though they them- 
selves may perish too, they will have done their duty : 
shattering tlie strength of the Japaneses' sea power, aiul 
preparing the way for the Baltic fleet's victorious success on 

* Words addressed to M. Rouvicr by Prince Radolin on ijth June. 
»M. Rihourd. 
'The ScaHdia. 



402 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

its arrival, in winning easily against a damaged antagonist, 
unable to repair his ships or build new ones in time. Then 
the sea power is back in your hands, and the Japaneses' land 
forces are at your mercy ; then you sound the ^general advance' 
for your army, and the enemy! Hallali." ^ 

Again, note how insidiously the descendant of Frederic 
the Anti-Machiavellian suggests that the Tsar should hold 
out because Japan's resources are fast ebbing and she is 
making desperate efforts to obtain peace, and Manchuria, 
and is being helped by perfidious Albion: 'T think the 
strings of all these doings lead across the Channel." ^ A 
few days later the Tsar thanks him, and says that he is not 
quite certain whether "the strings of these doings lead 
across the Channel or perhaps the Atlantic. You may be 
sure that Russia. shall fight this war to the end until the last 
Jap is driven out of Manchuria, only then can come the talk 
about peace negotiations, and that solely between the two 
belligerents. May God help us. Hearty thanks for your 
loyal friendship, which I trust beyond anything. Nicky." ' 

That was peculiarly characteristic of Nicholas II., "to trust 
beyond anything" the man whose interest it was to circumvent 
him, and to distrust and discredit the most patriotic and 
genial statesman of his own country. 

At all costs the Tsar has to be isolated. Uncle Albert 
must be rendered suspect.^ The Americans, too, who in 
the person of Roosevelt may bring the Tsar to reason, must 
be debarred in advance, and debarred they are accordingly. 
Russia has been victimised in English waters, among the 
Hull fishermen off the Dogger Bank there was "foul play," 
the fishermen themselves "have already acknowledged 
that they have seen foreign steamcraft among their boats, 

* In the despatch sent from Hubertustock on 25th September (8th Octo- 
ber), 1904. 

'Cf. Confidential Despatch of 6th/i9th October, 1904. 

'Cf. Confidential Despatch dated ioth/23rd October, 1904. It is instruc- 
tive to watch the way in which suspicion is attached now to this person, 
now to that. The Tsar, Witte complained to me, made the King of Eng- 
land look upon Witte as a man not to be trusted. The Kaiser moved the 
Tsar to regard the King of England as insincere and an intriguer. . . . 

*Cf. Confidential Despatch, No. 15. 



APPENDIX 403 

not belonging to their fishing fleet, which they knew not! 
So there has been foul play! I think the British Embassy 
in Petersburg must know these news." And so this out- 
pouring of poisonous virus, which the mental organism of 
the poor, degenerate Russian was predisposed to assimilate, 
went on unceasingly. The august head of the German 
people posed before him whom he had recently saluted as 
admiral of the Pacific as a sort of head spy who had numerous 
other spies under him. And to his beloved friend he hurried 
with the precious information thus collected, whenever it 
appeared likely to be of use. It was in this unchivalrous 
capacity that he discovered the "foul play" of which 
Admiral Roshdjestvensky was "the victim" in the North 
Sea, and that he was able to write : ^ "From reliable source 
(sic) in India I am secretly informed that expedition a la 
Tibet is being quickly prepared for Afghanistan. It is meant 
to bring that country for once and all under British influ- 
ence, if possible direct suzerainty.^ The expedition is to 
leave end of this month. The only not English European in 
Afghanistan service, the director of the arms manufactory 
of the Emir, a German gentleman, has been murdered as 
preamhule to the action." And four days later he asserts 
that: "My statement about India in last telegram are {sic) 
corroborated by the speech of Lord Selborne, who alluded 
to Afghanistan question." ^ 

At the same time, with these and similar items of "news," 
the Tsar was treated with a constant stream of information, 
which was meant to touch him more closely and stimulate 
him to make common cause with Germany, who alone was 
befriending him in his own and his country's straits. Thus 
he complains that the English press "has been threatening 
Germany on no account to allow coals to be sent to Baltic 
fleet now on its way out. It is not impossible that the 

*On 2nd/i5th November, 1904. 

'This untruth impressed the Tsar profoundly. He remembered it when 
M. Izvolsky was negotiatinK with Sir Arthur Nicolson to arrange a con- 
vention, and he insisted stubbornly on obtaining? for Russia a frontier 
contiRUOus to Afghanistan. With diflficulty M. Izvolsky had his way. 

'Confidential Despatch of Oih/it^h November, lycxj. 



404 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

Japanese and British government may lodge a joint protest 
against our coaling your ships, coupled with a sommation to 
stop further work. The result aimed at by such a threat of 
war would be the absolute immobility of your fleet, and in- 
ability to proceed to its destination from want of fuel. This 
new danger would have to be faced in community by Russia 
and Germany together, who would both have to remind 
your ally France of obligations she has taken over in the 
treaty of dual alliance with you, in the case of casus foederis 
arising. It is out of the question that France on such an 
invitation would try to shirk her implicit duty towards her 
ally. Though Delcasse is an anglophile enrage, he will be 
wise enough to understand that the British fleet is utterly 
unable to save Paris." ^ 

And these things told. The Tsar, left largely to himself 
and his immediate surroundings, with no trusted adviser, is 
deeply touched by what he thus learns from this disin- 
terested friend about the wickedness of England and the 
coldness of France. All that was now wanted to crown the 
work was one of those unforeseen incalculable incidents 
with which war is fraught. And it duly came to pass. 
Admiral Roshdjestvensky, in a fit of nervousness akin to 
temporary folly, fired on the harmless fishermen off the 
Dogger Bank, provoking an outburst of anger in the British 
press. Thereupon the Kaiser's victory was secured. *T 
agree fully," the Tsar writes, *'with your complaints about 
England's behaviour concerning the coaling of our ships 
by German steamers, whereas she understands the rules of 
keeping neutrality in her own fashion. It is certainly high 
time to put a stop to this. The only way, as you say, would 
be that Germany, Russia, and France should at once unite 
upon an arrangement to abolish Anglo-Japanese arrogance 
and insolence. Would you like to lay down and frame the 
outlines of such a treaty and let me know it? As soon as 
accepted by us, France is bound to join her ally. This com- 

* Confidential Despatch, No. 13. The italics are mine. Here the Kaiser 
favours intimidation, but it is on the end that he fixes his gaze, not on the 
means. 



APPENDIX 405 

bination has often come to my mind; it will mean peace 
and rest for the world. Best love from Alix. Nicky." Here 
we have the origin of the secret treaty. "The only way, as 
you say." And the Tsar requests his brother potentate who 
has had this brilliant idea to formulate it in a treaty. And as 
for the republic, which is in a fever of excitement appre- 
hending an onslaught of the Germans, who are bullying it 
incessantly, the solution is facile: 'Trance is bound to join 
her ally." Bound. Morally? By treaty? . . . What is an 
obligation as Wilhelm II. understands it? 

Perseveringly the Kaiser went on in his underhand, 
sneaking way, fanning the embers until the flame appeared 
which was to shrivel and consume the Franco-Russian scrap 
of paper. The imperial detective has always a budget of 
news ready for his dreamy correspondent and adapted to 
the end in view. "I hear from trustworthy private source," 
{sic)y he writes, *'that tlie authorities in Tokio are getting 
anxious at the future outlook." ^ No more scientific poisoner 
of the wells of public information is known to mankind than 
the German Press Bureau in the Wilhelmstrasse, Berlin, 
and it may well be doubted whether the cleverest and least 
scrupulous member of that institution could successfully 
emulate the crowned head of the German State. Here is a 
superlatively knavish way of inventing rumours and dishing 
them up with his poisonous sauce. ''My suspicions accord- 
ingly, that the Japanese are trying secretly to get other power 
to mediate because they are now at the height of their suc- 
cesses, have proved correct. Lansdowne has asked Hayashi 
to intimate to England the conditions upon which Japan 
would conclude peace. They were telegraphed from Tokio. 
but were so preposterous that even blustering Lansdowne 
thought them too strong, and urged Hayashi to tone them 
down. When they made a wry face and difTicultics. T^ins- 
downe added, 'Of course England will lake good care that 
a mediaeval Russia will be kept well out of Manchuria, 
Korea, etc., so that de facto Japan will get all she wants.* 
That is the point the British have in their eye when they 
*Confi(l<'niial Despatch of 6th/i9th November, 1904. 



406 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA , 

Speak of friendship and friendly mediation. France, as I j 
hear from Japan, is already informed of these plans, and of 
course a party to this arrangement, taking — as usual in the 
new entente cordiale — the side of England. They are going 
to oifer you a bit of Persia as compensation, of course far 
from the shore of the gulf which England means to annex 
herself, fearing you might have access to the warm sea, 
which you must by right, as Persia is bound to fall under 
Russian control and government. This would give her a 
splendid commercial opening, which England wants to 
debar you from." ^ 

Lest this deadly hash of untruths should appear to 
Nicholas II. as what it really was, his august friend went on 
to remark modestly and offhandedly: "Your diplomatists 
will have reported all this to you before, but I thought, 
nevertheless, it my duty to inform you of all I knew, all of 
which are authentical serious news from absolute trust- 
worthy sources." Trustworthy sources indeed! 

The Tsar's request for the "outlines of a treaty" was 
granted speedily. The day after it was received an imperial 
messenger left for Tsarskoye Selo, carrying the draft which 
the Kaiser had already put together. It had a long preamble 
unattached to the document itself — a sort of justification for 
it, which the Tsar found "very interesting." What remarks 
the proposed covenant elicited I am now unable to say. I 
have grounds, however, for believing, and I find among the 
notes which are at present before me a statement written 
down in the year 1906 that this first draft provided for a 
triple alliance for Germany, Russia, and France, whereas the 
second project, brought to Tsarskoye Selo on 20th November 
by Count Lamsdorff himself,^ left out all mention of 

* Confidential Despatch of 6th/ 19th November, 1904. 

'Not to be confounded with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
Count Lamsdorff. The other was the special representative of the Kaiser 
attached to the person of the Tsar just as Shebeko first and Tatishtsheff 
later were personal envoys of the Tsar attached to the person of the 
Kaiser. These double embassies gave the Germans an advantage over the 
French which I was once requested to explain to a certain French Prime 
Minister in the hope that the government of the republic would introduce 
a like jirr^ngement, 



APPENDIX 407 

France except in the last clause, which stipulated that efforts 
would be made to induce the French nation to come into 
the alliance. 

Parenthetically I may say that the first draft was first 
given to me by mistake for the actual treaty. But the error 
was soon perceived and corrected. Since the revolution 
certain Russian newspapers, informed, it has been alleged, 
by relatives of an ex-minister, announce that the document 
was an offensive and defensive treaty. Others again describe 
it as a convention directed against France. My friend Witte 
never construed the object of the covenant in that way, but 
he argued, erroneously, that the letter of the treaty was 
capable of being turned against France and regarded as a 
Russo-German agreement with its point aimed at the 
republic. And that it was which aroused his indignation. 

It may be thought surprising that a monarch like 
Nicholas II., who had been brought up in the atmosphere 
of the court, taught by men of integrity like Pobiedonostseff 
and Witte, and initiated into foreign politics by Lobanoff 
and Lamsdorff, should have had his judgment so warped 
and his ideas so "coloured'* that he failed to suspect the 
wiles of his seducer, the drift of the proposal, or the necessary 
effect which the projected alliance must have on Russia's 
relations with France. It is, however, idle to vituperate the 
mental anarchy and moral blindness which prevented him 
from seeing how completely he was separating his country 
from France, and how impossible it was to distinguish this 
abandonment from the blackest kind of treason. Any moral 
faculty Nicholas II. may have possessed at the outset of his 
reign — and it must have been extremely slight — had long 
since been drained by self-worship and presumption. To 
one order of considerations he was still, however, susceptible: 
the opinion of the chiefs of influential nations who had 
trusted him. What he asks himself when he has the fateful 
document in its final shape before him is. What will the 
French say? How will they judge me? Affrighted by the 
answer he desires to beat a retreat, and with his shallow 
cunning he feigns to be especially solicitous about gaining 



\ 




408 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the support of the French and offers that as a motive tor 
breaking his promise of secrecy. Yet he has not the courage 
to do this without the permission of the tempter in whose 
toils he is. 

"Before signing the last draft of treaty I think it advisable 
to let the French see it. As long as it is not signed one can 
make small modifications in the text, whereas if already 
approved by us both it will seem as if we tried to enforce 
the treaty on France. In this case a failure might easily 
happen which I think is not your wish. Therefore I ask 
your agreement to acquaint the government of France with 
this project and upon getting their answer shall at once let 
you know by telegraph. Nicky." ^ 

Secrecy, as I podnted( out, was of the essence of the 
scheme. If the French Premier had had an inkling of what 
was brewing just then, he would have presented a note 
which the Tsar's government would be compelled to treat 
as an ultimatum and Nicholas II. would have realised that, 
not only the whole civilised world, but his own people, nay, 
his own official advisers, were arrayed against him. As it 
was, and without any knowledge of these machinations, 
Rouvier found much to blame in the attitude of the Russians 
and many a time he struck the table with his fist and uttered 
unprintable ejaculations addressed to the distant Tsarist 
government.^ Deterrent visions of what would take place if 
the French got wind of the project flitted before the Kaiser's 
mind and he forthwith telegraphed a highly argumentative 
plea for absolute secrecy. If the cabinet in Paris were to 
suspect what is being done for their benefit and that of 
Europe the result would be the opposite to that which the 
Tsar is so anxious to promote. This document with its 
moral motives will remain on record as a characteristic of 
the Avriter, his family, and his country. Here is the essential 
part of it: 

"Best thanks for telegram. You have given me a new 
proof of your perfect loyalty by deciding not to inform 

* Confidential Despatch sent on ioth/23rd November, 1904. 

* Before and during the Algeciras Conference. 



APPENDIX 409 

France without my agreement. Nevertheless it is my firm 
conviction that it would be absolutely dangerous to inform 
France before we both have signed the treaty; it would 
have an effect diametrically opposed to our wishes. It is 
only the absolute sure knowledge that we are both bound by 
treaty to lend each other mutual help that will bring the 
French to press upon England to remain quiet and keep 
the peace,* for fear of France's position being jeopardised. 
Should, however, France know that a Russo-German treaty 
is only projected, but still unsigned, she will immediately 
give short notice to her friend (if not secret ally) England, 
with whom she is bound by entente cordiale, and inform 
her immediately. The outcome of such information would 
doubtless be an instantaneous attack by the two allied powers, 
England and Japan, on Germany in Europe as well as in Asia. 
Their enormous maritime superiority would soon make 
short work of my small fleet and Germany would be tempo- 
rarily crippled. T^iis would upset the scales of the equi- 
librium of the world to our mutual harm, and later on, when 
you begin your peace negotiations, throw you alone on the 
tender mercies of Japan and her jubilant and overwhelming 
friends. It was my special wish, and, as I understand, your 
intention too, to maintain and strengthen this endangered 
equilibrium of the world through expressly the agreement 
between Russia, Germany, and France. That is only possible 
if our treaty becomes a fact before {sic), and if we are per- 
fectly d' accord under any form. A previous information of 
France will lead to a catastrophe! — should you, notwith- 
standing, think it impossible for you to conclude a treaty 
with me, without the previous consent of France, then it 
would be a far safer alternative to abstain from concluding 
any treaty at all. Of course I shall be as absolutely silent 
about our pourparlers as you will be; in the same manner as 
you have only informed LamsdorfT, so I have only spoken 
to Bulow, who guaranteed absolute secrecy. Our mutual 
relations and feelings would remain unchanged as before, 

* Already, for the Kaiser's purpose, England was preparing to pounce on 
Germany or Russia and only their alliance could force her to keep the peace! 



410 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

and I shall go on trying to make myself useful to you as far 
as my safety will permit." ^ 

There is one point respecting which I should like to make 
a correction on behalf of two men who are now unable to 
make it in defence of themselves, Lamsdorff and Witte. 
The Kaiser assumes — probably not without what seemed to 
him satisfactory evidence — that as he had initiated Biilow 
into his scheme and the progress that he was making, so 
Nicholas 11. had kept his Minister of Foreign Affairs posted 
as to what was going on. Now if that had been done — and 
the Kaiser seems to have been told that it was — Witte also 
would have been apprised of it by his devoted friend, Lams- 
dorff, who kept nothing from him, whereas Lamsdorff 
himself in July, 1905, was absolutely ignorant of the trans- 
action. Witte's papers passed through my hands and I know 
that he had no inkling of what had been agreed upon until 
after he quitted the Kaiser at Rominten and returned to 
Russia. His anger when he had read the treaty knew no 
bounds, his action was prompt and vehement, and it made 
the Kaiser his bitter enemy for the remainder of his life. 

The Russian Tsar still stood shivering on the brink of 
the Rubicon repeatedly proclaiming his resolve to make the 
plunge. He has so much to say on the subject of the treaty 
that he cannot trust any one to cipher it. He prefers to write 
an autograph letter.^ The Kaiser replies enjoining the 
strictest circumspection. *'No third power must hear even 
a whisper about our intentions." ^ 

What took place between the Emperors during the en- 
suing two months there are no available telegrams to show."* 
Down to Monday, 24th July, 1905, the draft of the secret 
treaty remained a draft. I know that the Tsar positively 
affirmed this to Lamsdorff, his minister, in answer to 
a question as to whether the four clauses of the treaty, 
which was actually signed on that day, exhausted Russia's 

* Confidential Despatch sent by the Kaiser on i3th/26th November, 1904. 
'Confidential Despatch sent on ioth/23rd November, 1904. 
•Confidential Despatch, 27th November (loth December), 1904. 
'From I2th December, 1904, until 14th February, 1905. 



APPENDIX 411 

liabilities as incurred without the minister's knowledge. 
The question was necessary because of rumours that were 
rife about a secret "Nicky-Willy scheme" to proclaim the 
Baltic a closed sea to all warships except those belonging to 
the countries whose shores are washed by its waters. It was 
whispered that the plan had been mooted at Bjorke and some 
people — for a while Witte was one of them — believed that 
the Tsar was a consenting party. Colour was imparted to 
these rumours by the action of the British government which 
despatched a naval squadron to the Baltic. Wilhelm 11. 
commenting on this unsolicited visit in a telegram to the 
Tsar wxites: "Either England is anxious on account of our 
meeting or they want to frighten me !" ^ The despatch in 
which this passage occurs is worth perusing carefully, 
because among other curious things it affords us a glimpse 
of the prudential diplomatic measures which the two 
imperial conspirators were already taking in view of a war 
against Britain to be waged by the Russians and the Germans 
and at a moment too when they both regarded France as 
virtually England's ally ! What Witte af tenvards said to me 
was that this second plan of a campaign against Great Britain 
was without doubt discussed and agreed upon by the two 
Emperors, and that the only doubt he had on the subject 
was whether or no the result of their accord had been 
reduced to writing. Lamsdorff answered this query in the 
negative, and Witte's misgivings were laid. What seemed 
to me probable at a subsequent date when I was in possession 
of further details was that the Tsar had accepted tlie Kaiser's 
proposal for the joint occupation of Denmark, but as in the 
case of the secret treaty he felt uneasy about the impression 
it would make on his Danish friends, and in order to get on 
to the safe side in advance had requested Wilhelm to sound 
the King of Denmark. Translated into diplomatic language 
this would have meant the adherence of the Danish State 
to the Russo-German alliances. And if he failed to lure the 
King, he still had the Tsar's approval of the alternative — ^a 
violation of Denmark's neutrality. The sophisms with which 
* Confidential Despatch dated i6th/29th July. 1905. 



412 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

he persuaded himself that after all this violation of the 
neutrality of the people who had so often and so long enter- 
tained his father and himself in their hospitable land was at 
bottom for their good give one the measure of the back- 
boneless, or what Russians would term the jelly-like, quality 
that unfitted him for any kind of dealings based on the trust 
of man in man. 

The Tsar's Mentor and seducer, on the other hand, never 
loses sight of his goal, never flags in his devotion to his 
country, of which he makes a deity to be worshipped and 
conciliated by every kind of sacrifice known to human 
religions. Nor can it be gainsaid that in spite of his utter 
a-morality — not to give it a worse name — and his organic 
incapacity to appreciate men of principle and intellectual 
integrity, he is not without a clear conception of how shape 
and proportion should be given to his idea of the United 
States of Europe. Perverted though his moral sense un- 
doubtedly is, he is a political prophet with a very definite 
faith and a marvellous curiosity for enthusiasm and self- 
sacrifice. And history will associate his name in one of its 
darkest pages with the Machiavellian devices by which 
Russia, the Empire of his ''friend," was thrust from among 
the potent factors of political Europe. 

The conduct and character of the two Emperors and the 
parts they played in one of the most momentous crises of 
human history reflect in a way the differences between their 
respective realms. Germany like Russia is a predatory State, 
but within it is a model of order and organisation. The 
people are educated, talents are recognised and employed, 
the sciences and arts are encouraged, opinions are free, the 
egotism of the State is enlightened. The expansion demanded 
by Germany is for the good of the race or for its honour and 
glory. And if the parliament and other institutions are not 
democratic the reason is because the population is not 
democratic but hierarchical. 

In the Tsardom, on the other hand, we saw rapacity 
within and rapacity without and no curb to restrain it 
effectively. Government was neither by the people nor for 



APPENDIX 413 

them, in truth there was no government, but only regu- 
larised anarchy. The social conceptions, the political insti- 
tutions, the agencies of cultural advance which in Germany 
challenge admiration were in Russia hindrances instead of 
helps. And at the head of this vast seething society which 
resembled a continent, so numerous were its races, lan- 
guages, and religions, stood a man of dwarfish mental reach, 
torpid unveracity of heart, and anti-social propensities. Yet 
this was the official trustee and spokesman of the community 
which was reckoned to be the world's most powerful State, 
the man of destiny who dealt the stroke of grace to the 
mighty Russian Empire. 

The Text of the Secret Treaty signed on the 24th July, 
1905, is as follows: — 

*Their imperial Majesties, the Emperor of all the Russias 
and the Emperor of Germany, with the object of maintain- 
ing peace in Europe, have agreed on the following points of 
a defensive alliance : — 

1. If any European State attacks one of the two Empires 

the allied party will employ all its naval and mili- 
tary forces to assist its ally. 

2. The high contracting parties undertake not to con- 

clude a separate peace with any common adversar)\ 

3. The present treaty will come into force at the 

moment when peace is concluded lx?twecn Russia 
and Japan. A year's notice must be given to 
terminate it. 

4. As soon as this treaty comes into force Russia will 

take the necessary steps to make TVance acijuaintod 
with it, and will suggest to France that she should 
participate in it as an ally." 

This covenant, so long as it remained in force, annulleil 
the Kusso-Frcnch Alliance, so that during the months that 
lapsed Ix'tween the meeting of the monarchs at Bjorkc and 



414 THE ECLIPSE OF RUSSIA 

the vigorous sally by which Witte and Lamsdorff cancelled 
it, Russia was separated from her official ally and associated 
with that ally's enemy. If war had broken out between 
Britain and Germany or even between France and Ger- 
many, and if the Berlin government maintained, as it would 
have done, that the assailant was Britain or France, the text 
of this agreement would have obliged Russia to take sides 
with Germany. Probably because of that corollary Count 
Witte sometimes spoke of the alliance as aimed against 
France, that being the aspect which struck him most forcibly. 
As a matter of fact it was against Great Britain, and he knew 
it perfectly. 

As soon as rumours reached me of the underhand efforts 
of the Kaiser, I did what I felt justified in doing to warn the 
Entente nations, and my utterances were as clear as I could 
fairly make them. Thus I wrote: "Germany's voice ap- 
parently carries more weight in autocratic Russia than that 
of any other power just now. It is soft and sweet and 
insinuating, and resembles in other respects that of the 
Lorelei." ^ Again : "Germany thirsts for Russia's friend- 
ship as King Richard craved for a horse. That friendship 
was the making of Germany in the past, and might prove 
the immaking of Germany's rivals in the future. To the 
great Slav power whom she coaxed, flattered, reviled, and 
injured as her interests demanded under changing condi- 
tions, she owes much of what she is and has. And it is 
obvious to every one acquainted with international politics 
that without the active and self-denying friendship, or else 
the paralysis, of Russia in Europe, Germany will never 
work out her glorious destiny as the great HohenzoUern 
conceives it. Hence the high bid which she is prepared to 
make for Russia's support, and the high hopes she cherishes 
of obtaining it. Prudence, however, is indispensable to 
success, and secrecy is part of prudence." ^ And further : 
"As without Mercury's sickle Perseus would never have 
contrived to cut off the head of Medusa, so without France's 

*Cf. Contemporary Review, November, 1905, p. 610. 
* Ibidem, p. 610. 



APPENDIX 415 

sword there is little or no hope at present of Germany's 

cutting down Great Britain's strength and prestige to the 

needful level. France's co-operation is as necessary as 

Russia's to the realisation of the Hohenzollern dream of a 

world Empire, and Germany cannot have it directly for 

love, or money, or threats. Perhaps Russia's good offices 

might gain it for her? That expedient, too, has been tried, 

is still being tried, and will doubtless fail as signally as the 

flourishing of the whip. 'You cannot win love by violence,' 

says the Muscovite proverb. Besides, Russia's helpfulness 

would necessarily cease where self-sacrifice began, and 

sacrifice of a very serious kind would seem to be the 

corollary of further efforts in the direction of a Franco- 

Russo-German coalition." ^ 

The gist of one of the Kaiser's arguments to the Tsar I 

reproduced in an article explaining that Russia's defeat in 

Manchuria tempted Germany in the person of the Kaiser 

to use Morocco as a pretext for arranging an alliance with 

France. I wrote: "Figuratively speaking, a pistol was 

levelled at the head of the republic, which was accosted 

with the words, *Your property or your love.' Since you 

^signed the peace treaty in Frank fort-on-the-Main you have 

been conspiring against me, biding your time, preparing 

for your opportunity. Dispel your idle dreams, desist from 

plotting, and become the sincere friend and helpful ally of 

your enemy of thirty-five years ago. We may then IxDth of 

us reduce our armies and retrench expenditure. With the 

Tsardom you need not break. All three we shall then join 

our naval and military forces and obtain for continental 

Europe the colonial possessions which it craves and merits, 

wresting them from the loose grasp of Britain. If you refuse, 

if you still persist in haunting the forests of the Vosgcs, 

then let us try issues and fight it out without delay. Decide 

without further loss of time.' "^ 

^Ibidem, pp. 6il, 612. 

'Contemporary Review, August, 190S, p. aftS- 



INDEX 



Abaza, 280, 283 sqq. 
Abdul Hamid, 223, 236, 240, 265 
Aehrenthal, 331 

Afghanistan, Agreement between 
Russia and England respecting, 

230, 351 
Afghans, 226 
Agriculture, 57 
Akimoff, President of Council of 

Empire, 190 
Aksakoff, 39 
Alexander I., Z7, 45 
Alexander II., 8, 21, 38, y6; assassi- 
nation of, 77, 84, 118, 151, 156 
Alexander III., 34, 39, 43, 44, 54, 58, 

72, 86, 91, 98, 106, 126, 150, 260, 

321, 2,72. 
Alexandra Feodorovna, Empress, 

270 
Alexeyeff, Admiral, 135, 280, 283, 284 
Alexis, Grand Duke, 285 
Alexis Mikhailovitch, 49, 134 
Algeciras Conference, 396 
Alsace and Lorraine, 318 sqq., 348, 

398 
Ambrose, Metropolitan of Khar- 

koff, 91 
America, United States of, 342 sqq., 

37^ 
Amphithcatroff, M., 149 
Anarchist bias in Russian race, 26 
Anarchy, Spirit of, 390 
Anglican Church, Correspondence 

of Metropolitan Isidore with, 92 
Anglo-French Entente, 399 
Anglo-German agreement, 268 
Anglo-Russian Entente, 257 
Antoninus, Bishop, 158 
Armenian Church and schools, 152 
Armenians, 20, 43, 119, 132, 145, 222, 

229, 235, 23«, 259, 265. 2,72 
Army, Russian, 44, 50, 384, 387 
Assembly, Constituent, 10 
Austria. 35, 40, 233 
Autocracy, ^7, 48, 129 sqq., 140 sqq., 

151, 182, 375 



Azeff, Yevno, head spy of Russian 
government, 46, 119, I33, 158-182, 
382 

Baghdad railway, 368 

Bakunin, 68, 72, 106 

Barnabas or Varnava, Bishop of 

Tobolsk, 197 
Believers, Old (section of Orthodox 

Church), 54, 88, 95, 153 sqq. 
Benckendorff, Count, 297 
Bethmann-HoUweg, 368 
Bezobrazoff, 135, 254, 280, 283, 288 
Birileff, Admiral, 237, 299, 367 
Bismarck and the Ems telegram, 287 
Bjorke, Secret Treaty of, 237, 312- 

370; details of, 393; text of, 412 
Black Sea, Treaties relative to the, 

240 
Blaramberg, 108 
Bloch, Jean, 270 
Bloody Sunday, 1 10, 159, 185 
Bobrikoff, General, 259 
Boer War, 230, 318, 398 
Bolshevik revolution of 1917, 10, 3Z, 

146. 239, 388 
Bosphorus, Territory on Upper, 231, 

380 
Bouliguine Bill, 339 
Boxers' insurrection, 41, 279 
Bulgaria, 225 
Billow, Count von, 250, 268, 312 «., 

319. 325 
Bulyghin, A. T., 294 
Hunvl, Revolutionary, 7 
Bureau, Rule of the, 83-105 
Bureaucracy, 9, 48, 71, I4<\ I41, 

151, 181 
Burtzcff. 179, 283 n. 
Bytchkoff, Athanasius, 91 

Capital. Foreign, introduced into 

Russian Empire, 60 
Caprivi, Count, 321 
Catherine. Wars of, 45, 224 
Catherine II., 47 



417 



418 



INDEX 



Caucasian peoples, 43 

Channel tunnel, 347 

China, 225, 260 sqq., 279, 319, 379 

Chinese Eastern railway, 234, 260 

sqq. 
Chino-Japanese campaign, 244 sqq. 
Church, Byzantine, 59; Orthodox 
Russian, 49, 89 sqq., 107, 119, 151 
Classes, Two, in Russia, 86 
Clergy, The, 66, 153 
Congresses, Professional, 138 
Constitution of October, 1905, 2 
Constitutional Democrats, see Kadets 
Constitutional government, 6; peti- 
tion for, 140 
Corn tariff, Russian, 324 
Council of Empire, 37, 148, 152, 322 
Council of Ministers, 79, 127 sqq. 
Council of Workmen and Soldiers, 

38s 
Currie, Sir Philip, 223, 235, 265 

Dardanelles, 239 sqq., 266 
Dashkoff, Count Vorontseff, 132 
Delcasse, M., 318, 330, 337, 396, 398, 

403 
Delyanoff, Count, 54, 79, 255 
Denmark, 298; King of, 410 
Dillon, E. J., 6 sqq., 26; Professor 
of Comparative Philology at Khar- 
koff, 54; personal recollections of, 
61-S2; at Portsmouth Peace Con- 
ference, 299 sqq.; reference to, in 
Hayashi's Secret Memoirs,302 sqq. 
Djunkoffsky, 184 
Dmitry, 41 

Dmitry, Bishop of Tamboff, 156 
Dobroliuboff, M., 72 
Doctor in Russia, The, 66 
Dolgoruky, Prince, 148, 282 
Donnersmarck, Henckel von, 400 
Dookhobortsy, The, 88, 95 
Dostoyeffsky, 5, 63 
Dreyfus case, 271 
Druses of the Hauran, Revolt 

among the, 238 
Dubassoff, Admiral, 177, 249 
Dubrovina, Alexandra, 206 sqq. 
Duma, The, 8, 17, 181 sqq., 216, 337, 

386 
Durnovo, Minister of Interior, 165, 
183 

East, Russia in the Far, 40, 43, 279- 

311 
Eckhardstein, Baron von, 297 



Economics, 40 

Edict No. I, 386 

Education in Russia, Necessity of, 

41 
Educational system, Strike against, 

126 sqq. 
Edward VII., King, 350, 353, 379, 

400 
Emir, Relations of Russian Foreign 

Office with, 230 
Empire, Council of the, 115 
Empress, The, see Tsaritsa 
Empress, The Dowager, 117, 126, 

132, 136 
Enfranchisement, Political, 42 
Engineers' congress, 138 
Entente Powers, The, 17, 314 
Ernst Ludwig, Grand Duke, 328 
Esthonians, 372 

Fashoda crisis, 318 

Faure, President Felix, 212 

Federation of European nations, 344 

sqq., 367 
Feodoroff, 189 
Ferdinand of Coburg, 233 
Finland, 292, 321 
Finns, 20, 23, 31, 37, 43, 145, 178, 

259, 293 
France, 40, 229, 246, 318, 331, 335, 

400, 406 sqq. 
Franco-Russian alliance, 357, 359 
Frederic the Great, 40, 387 
French government and Russian 

loan, 8; and Armenian question, 

223; and secret treaty of Bjorke, 

338 sqq. 
French Revolution, 20 

Galitzin, Prince, 132, 259 

Galy, M., 296 n., 297 

Gapon, Father George, 46, 132, 156, 

158-183 
Georgia, 20, 225, 372 
Gerassimoff, 181 
Germans, 37; favoured by Peter 

the Great, 34; aggression of, at 

Kiao Chow, 224 
Germany, 40, 244, 246, 312 sqq. 
Giers, 253 
Gildenband, Baron Uexkull von, 

153 
Gladstone's speech on Armenia, 265 
Godunoff, Boris, 50 
Gogol's Dead Souls, 15 
Gontshareff, 63 



INDEX 



419 



GorW. Maxim, 97, 160 
Gortchakoff, 221 

Government, Representative, 128 sqq. 
Great Britain, 40, 227, 230, 235, 257, 

263, 265, 267, 271, 318 sqq., 331 

sqq., 339, 343. 345 ^^7^-, 360, 365, 

382, 399 sqq. 
Grigorieff, Basil, 71 
Guardians of the People, see Zem- 

skiye Natshahiiki 
Guards, Lenin's Red, 33 
Gun-power of the various nations, 

271 sqq. 
Gusseva, K., 218 
Gutchkoff, M., 146, 215 

Hague Conference, 232, 269 sqq. 

Hartwig, Russian Minister at Te- 
heran, 228 

Hayashi, Count, 229, 234, 296, 330, 
404 

Hermogen, Mgr., Bishop of Sara- 
toff, 210, 219 

Herzen, 68, 72 

Herzenstein, Assassination of, 188, 
193 

Hesse, Grand Duke of, 329 

Hesse, Princess Alix of, 108 

Heyden, Count, 139, 295 

Hohenzollem rule, 30 

Holy League, The, 81 

Hunkiar Skelessi Treaty, 226 

Ignatieff, Count Nicholas, 86 
Iliodor, The monk, 212, 217 
Industrialisation, Witte's policy of, 

89, 182 
Industries, Russian, 43, 106 
International relations of Russia, 

221-252 
Iranian people, TTie, 228 
Isidore, Metropolitan of Petersburg 

and Finland, 91 
Ito, Marquis, 301, 303 
Ivan, founder of Tsardom, 29, 87, 

125. 181 
Ivan III., 32 
Ivan Nikolayevitch, 176 
Izvolsky, M., 222, 228, 253 sqq., 2&2, 

297, 364, 368, 379 

Japan, 92, 119, 124, 13S. 139, 260 sqq., 

280. 281, 293, 319, 401 sqq. 
Japanese, 6g, 137 
Japanese War, 244, 285 sqq. 
]ey/s, 6, 20, 43, 62, 145. IS'. 372 



John of Cronstadt, Father, 107, 211, 

3^3 
Juridical Society of Moscow, 126 

Kadet Party, 5, 10, 69, 145 

Kaiser, see Wilhelm II. of Germany 

Katkoff, 37, 80 

Kazantseff. 188 sqq., 382 

Kedrin, 160 

Kharkoff, Zemsky Assembly of, 183 

Khilkoff, Prince, 279 

Khlysty, The, 88, 203 sqq. 

Khomyakoff, 91 n. 

Khvostoff, A. N., 210, 214, 219 

Kiao Chow, 224; story of, 244-252, 

320, 334, 347 
Kiderlen-Wachter, 368 
Kieff, Grand Dukes of, 30 
Kokofftseff, M., 194, 293, 337, 370 
Komaroff, Bessarion, 79, 83 
Komura, 301, 307 
Konovnitzin, Count, 178 
Koolak, 67 

Kossowicz, Professor Cayetan, 91 
Kovalevsky, Professor Maxim, 16, 

38, 322 
Kurds, 24 

Kurino, Baron, 286, 296 
Kurloff, 181 
Kuropatkin, General, 257, 266 sqq., 

279, 289 sqq., 294, 299 

Lamsdorff, Count, 185, 245, 253 sqq., 
280 sqq., 298 sqq.. 334, 32!^, 340. 
355 sqq., 405, 409 

Lansdowne, Lord, 402 

Launitz, General von, 192 n., 382 

Law courts, 89 

Lawyers' congress, 138 

Lenin, 22, 388 

Leskoff, 4, 15, 63, 107 n. 

Letters, see Literature 

Letts. 37-2 

I^vashoff. Countess, 112 

Liberals, 7. 74 

Li Hung Chang, 234, 260 sqq. 

Linicvitch, General, 296, 299 

Literature, 106 

Lithuanians, 37, 372 

Ix)banoff-Rostoffsky, 233, 241, 253* 

257 
Lopukhine, cx-Dircctor of Policy 

1Q2 

Loul)et. President. 330 
Ix)uis XIV., France of, 64 
Louix XVI., Ill 



420 



INDEX 



Lutherans, 88, 152 
LvoflF, Prince, 139 

Macedonians, 225, 229 
MacMahon, Kaiser condoles with 

widow of Marshal, 318 
Manchu dynasty, 267 
Manchu-Korean difficulties, 282 
Manchurian campaign of 1904, 4S» 

119, 138, 142, 153, 175, 195, 261, 

288 sqq., 320, 324, 372; railway, 

260 sqq., 279 
Maria Theresa, 224 
Marie Antoinette, 109 
Martens, Professor, 335 
Maximalist revolution, 13 
Mechelin, 31 
Medical congress, 138 
Melikoff, Loris, 75, 79, 81, 82, 86 
Mendelssohn, 365 
Merchants, Close corporation of 

Russian, 66 
Methodius, Bishop, 154 
Mezentseff, 74 
Michael, Grand Duke, 44, 144, 153- 

311 
Michael, Metropolitan of Serbia, 91 
Militarism and socialism, 343 
Milyukoff, Professor, 14 n., 146 
Milyutin, 79 

Ministers, Council of, 79, 127 sqq. 
Mir, The, 67 
Mirsky, Prince Sviatopolk, 141, 142, 

160, 372 
Mitrophan of Voronesh, 155 
Monarchy, Abolition of, 9 
Mongols, 20, 26 
Monroe doctrine, 246 
Mooshik, 4, 42 
Morocco, Troubles of France in, 

331, 359, 400 
Moscow Town Council petition for 

reform, 141 
Mukden, Battle of, 296 
Muravieff, Count, 229, 248 sqq., 253, 

285, 298, 318, 398 
Muscovite Empire, 229 
Muscovy, 181, 224 

Narodniki, 5 

Nations, League of, 275, 314 
Nelidoff, 194, 235, 236, 298, 380 
V Nelidoff-Tshikhatshoflf conspiracy, 

237 
Nicholas L, 11, 15, 38, 45, Si, 

147 



Nicholas II., 2 sqq., 43, 45, 72 ; pro- 
posed reforms of, 79, 98; advent 
of, 106-119; rule of, 120-138; 
promises reforms, 142; political 
blindness of, 152; narrow-minded 
in religious matters, 152; "vicar 
of God upon earth," 185 ; and 
Rasputin, 214; action in Persian 
affairs, 228; plot to seize territory 
on Upper Bosphorus, 231 ; secre- 
tive nature of, 237; treaty with 
Kaiser regarding Kiao Chow, 244- 
252; Hague Conference, 270; 
lease of Port Arthur, 271 ; anti- 
pathy to Count Witte, 281; 
"mainstay of world's peace," 283 ; 
policy in Far East, 279-311 ; secret 
treaty with Wilhelm II. at Bjorke, 
312-370; compact with Kaiser at 
Potsdam, 380 ; waging war on two 
fronts, 381 ; friendly towards 
France, 400 

Nicky and Willy telegrams, 393, 401, 
404, 407 

Nicolson, Sir Arthur, 365, 402 n. 

Nika- or, Archbishop of Kherson 
and Odessa, 58, 91 

Nikitenko, M., 12 

Nikolai Nikolayevitch, Grand Duke, 
216, 307, 361 

Nippon, 280 

Nobility, Russian, 217 

Norderney, Witte and von Biilow 
at, 325 sqq. 

Obolensky, Prince, 119 «., 282 
O'Connor, Sir Nicholas, 244 n. 
Opritchniki, The, 32, 87, 181 
Orthodox Church, see Church 
Ostroffsky, 6S 
Ottoman Empire, 223, 226, 238 

Pahlen, Count, 64, 74 

Parish priest in Russia, The, 66 

Patkanian, Professor, y6 

Paul, Wars of Emperor, 45 

Peace conference at Portmouth, 
U.S.A., 137, 297, 350 

Peasantry, Russian, 9, 27, 51, 57, 66, 
85, 89, 138, 383 

Penal code, New, 152 

People's will, The, 72 

Persia, Muscovy undertakes to pro- 
tect, 226 

Peter the Great, 11, 29, 33, 47, 50, 
125, 258 



INDEX 



421 



Petersburg Council of Working Men 

and Soldiers, 384; Poljtechnic 

Institute, Memorial of, 141 
Petroff, 191 
Petrunke\-itch. M., 7 
Philippe, M., 107, 118, 138, 155. 165, 

212 
Philippoff, Tertius, 71, 79, 91 
Physicians, Congress of, 39 
Pitirim, Metropolitan Archbishop, 

196 
Plato, Metropolitan of KieflF, 91 
Plehve, Public Prosecutor. 35. 39, 

41, 78, 118, 126. 132; assassination 

of, 133. 14^, 148, 149, 151. 175, 

182, 293. 382 
PobiedonostseflF. K., 36, 37, 39, 58, 

79. 83, 86. 88, 89, 92, 93. 98. 102, 

115, 137, 233^ 242, 371 
Pogroms. 7 

Poklevsk-j-Kozel, 350 sqq., 379 
Poland, Partition of. 224, 292 
Poles, 37, 43. 119, 145, 3^^. 372 
Police, Russian, 89; secret, 159, 176 
Portsmouth. U.S.A.. 137. 297, 350 
Press. Russian, 42, 80, 89, 217, 325, 

360. 406 
Pressense, De, 265 
Protective regulations, 147 
Protopopoff, 196, 385 
Putj-atin, Prince, 127 

Railway Building, 40, 106 
Railwaymen's congress. 138 
Rasputin, Gregory or Grisha, 46, 88, 

196-220, 340 
RatchkofTsk>', head of political po- 
lice, 165 sqq. 
Religion of Russian people, 59 
Religious matters. Coercion in, 89 
Religious persecution. 88, 95, 151 

sqq. 
Religious sectarians. 88 sqa. 
Revolution of 191 7. 9. 45. 09. 384 
Rcvolutionar>' movement of 1905. 
139-157. 378, 384 ^ 

Revolutionar>- spirit, 69, 71. 74, 88 
Richard II. of England. 109 
Roditcheff. M.. 7 
Rodzianko, M., 146 
Roman Catholics, 88 
Romanoff, House of, 181 
Roosevelt, President, 298 sqq. 
Rosen, Baron, 284, 335 
Roshdjestrensky, Admiral, 122, 996. 
402 



Rothschild, Alphonsc, 330 

Rouyier, M., 330, 333. 396, 407 

Russia, Elnigma of, i-io; the Rus- 
sian mind, 11-25; nomadic char- 
acter of Russian people, 24; lack 
of unit>-, 26-46; international re- 
lations of, 221-252; in Far East, 
279-311 

Russian PeopU, League of the, 189^ 
193 

Rus so-German commercial treaty, 
137, 312 

Russo-Japanese agreement, a8i 

Russo-Japanese War, 285 sqq. 

Ruthenberg, "Martin." 162 sqq. 

Ruthenians, 119 

RutkofiFsk>-. Russian commercial at- 
tache in London, 297, 330 

Sakhalien. Island of, 186, 305 sqq. 

Sakharotf. General. 299 

Salisbur}-. Lord, 227 

Salt>-koff. 51 

Samarin. M.. 215 

Sanders, General Liman von, 369 

sqq., 381 
Sa\-insk>', M., 282 
Sazonoff, 35, 39, 221, 228, 369 
Schools in Russia, 66. 89 
Schwanebach. 181, 365 
Secret treaty-. I>etails of, 31-2-370 
Selbome. Lord. 403 
Senate, The, 128 
Seraphim, Abbot, 100 sqq. 
Seraphim, Canonisation of St, 118 
Seraphim of Saroff. 156 
Serfs, Emancipation of, 38, 51, 68, 

9s, 148 
Sergius, Grand Ehike, no, ij6, 133, 

143, 151, 167. !&♦, 382 
Sergius. Grand Duchess. 137 
Shah, Russian agreement with, 226 

sqq. 
Shimonoseki, Treaty of, 234. 246. 

319. 398 
ShipoflF. ex-Minister of Finance, 192 
Shinnsk)--Shikhmatoff. 127 
Shishkin. M.. 233, 239. 253 
Shtshcdrin, 30 n. 
Shtsheglo\-itoflF. Minister of Justice, 

191 fi. 
ShuvaloflF. Count, 321 
Siluan. Bishop, 154 
Simon. Jules. 3^^ 
Sip>'aghin, Assassination of, llS, 

149 



422 



INDEX 



Skobeleff, General, 8i 

Skoptsy, Sect of, 93 n., 202 

Slavs, 14, 19, 378 

Social Revolutionary Party, 174 

SolovieflF, Vladimir, 5, 49, 61, 90, 91, 

93 
Solsky, Count, 127 
Speransky, 37 
Squire in Russia, The, 66 
Stepniak, 74 
Stogoff, 52 

Stolypin, 181, 191, 214, 323, 382 
Striaptcheff, 197 

Stundists (Baptist sect), 88, 95 sqq. 
Stiirmer, 196 

Subject, Liberty of the, 64 
Suffrage, 2 
Sultan and Armenians, 222 sqq., 

226, 235 sqq., 265 
Swedes, 31 
Swinburne, lines on Russian prisons, 

46 
Synod, The Most Holy, 93, 98 sqq., 

156; Ober-Procurator of, 94, 215, 

243 

Takahira, 309 

Tartars, 20 

Tataroff, 176 

Taxes, Collection of, 9, 57 

Teachers, Congress of, 138 

Tennenbaum, 173 

Theophan, Bishop, 211 

Third Section, Secret police of the, 
74 

Tikhon, Bishop of Voroncsh, 156 

Timasheff, Minister of Interior, 64 

Tolstoy, Count Dmitry, 86, 93, 103, 
371 

Tolstoy, Leo, 36, 41. 49. 9° 

Trcpoff, General, 74, 138, 183 

Trotzky, 22, 388 

Trubetskoy, Princess, 126 n. 

Tsar, see Nicholas II. 

Tsardom, 47-60; last statesmen of, 
253-278; aggressive attitude of, 
257; downfall of, 371-390 

Tsarevitch and the Tsar, 122; and 
Rasputin, 214 

Tsaritsa, 121, 127, 136; and Ras- 
putin, 212, 216 

Tschirschky, Von, 250, 323 

Tshaadayeff, 11, 12 

Tshernyshevsky, 68, 72 

Tshikhatshoff, Admiral, 239, 242, 
380 



Tshin, The, 48 

Tsung Li Yamen, 260 sqq. 

Tsvetkoff, imprisonment at Suzdal, 

98 sqq. 
Turkey, 226, 242 sqq., 369 
Turkish war of 1877, 45, 221 
Turks, 30 

Ukase granting reforms, 127, 143, 

148 , I 

Ukhtomsky, Prince, 235 ' 

Ukraine provinces, 118 
Ukrainians, 147 

Uniates of Western Russia, 153 
Universities, Russian, 26, 67, 89 

Vamberg, Professor, 222 
Viazemsky, Prince, 140 
Victoria's advisers. Queen, 223, 235 
Vladimir, Grand Duke, 79, 90, 134, 

144 
Vyshnegradsky, 2)6 

Wiener, Leo, 13 n. 

Wilhelm II. of Germany, forces 
Tsar's hand at Kiao Chow, 225; 
secret treaty with Tsar concern- 11 
ing Kiao Chow, 247 sqq.; secret I 
treaty of Bjorke, 312-370; and 1' 
Morocco incident, 331 sqq.; Witte 
and, 342 sqq.; compact with Tsar 
at Potsdam, 380; and Edward 
VII,, 400; text of secret treaty 
with the Tsar, 412 

Wilson, President, 314 

Witte, Count Scrgius, Secretary of 1 
State, 2 sqq., Z7, 40 sqq., 60, 89, 106, I 
112 sqq., 119, 125 sqq., 137, 143 ^ 
sqq., 150 sqq., 158 sqq., 181; con- 
demned to die, 187-195 ; attempted 
assassination of, 186, 233 sqq.; 
policy in Far East, 245 sqq., 254 
sqq., 279; Tsar's antipathy to, 281, 
285 ; letter to Tsar on policy of 
Russia in East, 293 sqq.; at Ports- 
mouth Peace Conference, 297 
sqq.; and the Kaiser, 342 sqq.; 
success at Portsmouth, 350; dis- 
covery of secret treaty, 354 sqq. ; 
ideal of federation of European 
States, 367 ; optimism of, 375 ; 
visit to the Kaiser, 393. sqq., 400 

Women, Privileged status of edu- 
cated, 61 

Yalu speculation. The Tsar's, 135, 
153, 280, 324 



INDEX 423 

Yamagata, Prince, 303 Zaboroffsky, Rector, 198 

Yanysheff, President, Emperor's Zassulitch, Vera, 73 

chaplain, 93, 149 Zemskiye Natshalniki, 85 n. 

Yollos, B., Assassination of, 189, Zemsky Congress of Kaluga, 141 

193 Zemstvos, 84, 89, 116, 140, 217 

Yussupoff, Prince, 209, 214 Zubatoff, 158, 184 



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